The House That George Built

It all started with an inheritance and a house.

At least it seemed that way, though Uncle George Nowak was known for starting a lot of things while he was still alive, whether we wanted him to or not.

I am Uncle George’s closest living relative. When he died a year ago without leaving a will, his estate, such as it was, came to me. This included a bank account with $60 left in it, a 2008 black Toyota Camry with a small dent in its front right fender, and a house full of old furniture, books, papers in no particular order, assorted expired gadgets and cords, an old flip phone, a desktop computer of uncertain age, and a TV set that you sometimes had to hit to get it working. I was named executor of this crazy estate.

The house was the only item worth anything. It was a sturdy old brick dwelling, basically cozy, that just needed a good cleaning and some renovation to make it sellable.

The only problem with the house was that Uncle George refused to vacate it, even though he was dead.

He had been one of the family’s more colorful characters. As a young man, he was an actor and musical theater performer and even performed on Broadway. He met my Aunt Louise when they were performing together. She died soon after they both retired, leaving Uncle George a lonely widower. He never remarried.

The first sign of paranormal activity in the house came when the painters prepared to paint the living room. To do this, they had to move the furniture to the middle of the room. Every time they moved a piece of furniture, something moved it back to its original spot. Seeing this, the painters quickly picked up everything and left the house, promising never to come back. “This place is haunted!” one of them said as they pushed and stumbled their way out the front door.

I didn’t believe the painters. I hadn’t been around to see anything unusual, so I thought they were imagining things. After all, there was no such thing as a ghost, so the house couldn’t be haunted.I put it down to laziness or the painters' wild imagination and let it go at that.

My nephew Jerry and I decided to paint the rooms ourselves. We had to do this without moving the furniture, because what the painters had told us was happening. The furniture was moving, seemingly on its own, without help. This was spooky as hell, and it also made the whole job harder. I eventually got tired of this. One day, I decided to confront whatever force was working against us.

“Okay, whoever or whatever you are,” I said, standing in the middle of the living room with my hands on my hips, with yellow paint all over the white apron I was wearing, “Reveal yourself NOW, and stop interfering with us.”

“You know very well who I am,” a voice said. “Your Uncle George. I might be dead, but I’m still here.”

“If you’re Uncle George, show yourself!”

He gradually appeared, starting with his feet and ending with his head. He stood next to an old, worn recliner. I recognized his long gray hair tied in a ponytail at the back of his neck, his “distressed” jeans, his black Rolling Stones T-shirt, and his face, marked by age, assorted mischief, and experience.

“You ARE Uncle George!” I exclaimed, backing away.

“Who did you think I was, Sean Penn?”

“Why are you making the renovation job difficult? Why won’t you let us move the furniture?”

“That furniture has lived here many years. It doesn’t want to be moved.”

“Oh, come on! Furniture doesn’t have feelings. It’s inanimate.”

“Well, I have feelings. And I don’t want my furniture moved. I don’t mind you painting the walls. I like that yellow color you picked out. But don’t touch anything else.”

“Uncle George, you’re dead. We inherited your house, including your furniture. We have a right to move it.”

“What are you planning to do with the house?’ Uncle George looked distraught.

“Fix it up and sell it,” I said, looking him in the eyes, or whatever he had that passed for eyes.

“No! You can live here, but no strangers.”

“I rent an apartment. I live in it.”

“Then move!” Uncle George gradually disappeared, beginning with his head and ending with his feet.

That was my first encounter with Uncle George's ghost.

I thought about Uncle George’s invitation to live in his house, and the more I thought about it, the more attractive the idea became. I figured I could put up with a ghost to get a nice, comfortable house I wouldn’t have to buy. I would somehow deal with Uncle George and his furniture.

The second encounter came a week after the first one. We had painted the rooms that needed painting, and I had offered the furniture to the Salvation Army Store without consulting Uncle George's spirit. They were due to pick it up in a day or two. Uncle George appeared as I was going through the drawers of an old armoire to see if I had missed anything valuable.

“What are you doing with my furniture, dammit?” he demanded. His ghostly eyes were giving me a lightning-bolt look.

“You want this to be my house. Well, I can agree to that, but I want my own furniture. It’s much newer and in better shape than this junk.”

“Don’t you call my furniture junk! It’s just time-worn. It’s been lived in. My life is in that old stuff!” Uncle George’s spirit face hardened.

“Well, I can’t live with it, and you want me to live here, right?” I could be stubborn, too.

It took some doing over the next two days, but I managed to convince Uncle George to exchange his old furniture for mine – except for one thing.He refused to give up his old recliner.It had beer stains and two strips of duct tape masked an old tear. It also had an indentation where someone’s head had often lain.

“I read many books, watched a lot of TV, and took a lot of naps in that chair! You’re getting rid of it over my dead body!”

“Your dead body is already buried, Uncle George!”

“Well then, over my live spirit!”

I was finally forced to keep the old, ratty recliner. The Salvation Army came and picked up the rest of the old furniture, and I moved my pieces into the house and arranged them to my liking.

I figured if I had to keep the old recliner, I would at least spruce it up a little. I took some beautiful, crocheted pieces I had received from my grandmother, Uncle George’s mother, and I placed them on the decrepit chair.

“What are you doing?” demanded Uncle George when he saw what I had done.“You’re turning my chair into a female thing with all that frilly stuff! It’s my chair, and I’m a man!”

“I’m making it presentable,” I insisted. “People won’t look at it and go ‘Ugh!’”

“What people?”

“Friends and visitors!” I said, hands on my hips.

“If I could live with that old chair the way it is, so can they!”

“How can I explain to people that a ghost won’t let me beautify an old chair?” I was exasperated at this point.

“That’s your problem.” With that, he disappeared.

Two could play at that game, I thought. If I had to keep that old, crummy piece of detritus, I'd at least put it where people wouldn’t notice it so much. I moved it to a corner of the living room, partially hidden by my entertainment center and a fake palm tree. Uncle George would have to be satisfied.

Well, he wasn’t satisfied. I came home from shopping one day and found the chair in the middle of the living room, prominently displayed in all its worn-out glory right next to my beautiful, relatively new sofa.

“Okay, Uncle George!” I shouted, in case he wasn’t near enough to hear me, “Show yourself! NOW!”

“What do you want?” It was his voice, but I couldn’t see him.

“Where are you?”

“Over here,” he said. I looked, and there he was, sitting in the old recliner. As I looked, he pushed the recliner back and laid himself down in it.

“I agreed to keep that old chair, but I didn’t agree to display it!”

“Why not?”

“It doesn’t match the rest of the furniture. It’s old, and it needs to be reupholstered.”

“Don’t you dare mess with it! I’ll make you sorry if you do!”

“You already are! I always give in to you, and you always make me sorry I did.”

We kept arguing until Uncle George agreed I could put the offending piece back in the corner, as long as I pulled it out so it was easier to see. I wanted to argue some more and get him to agree to let me decorate the chair, but figured I’d better be happy with our compromise and leave it at that for now.

Once the renovations were finished, I was happy to move into the house Uncle George had occupied – and was still occupying. I had gotten used to our exchanges and almost looked forward to them. They made life interesting, or at least not boring.

When I moved into the house, Uncle George welcomed me in a curmudgeonly way, but then I didn’t see or hear him for about a week. I was kind of sad, thinking that maybe he had left to go wherever he was supposed to go after he died, but figured I’d best leave him to his own destiny.

I invited Jim Martin to visit me one evening. He was boyfriend material – tall, movie-star handsome, and very charming. I invited him for dinner. I served my signature coq au vin. He had two helpings and complimented my cooking profusely. After dinner, he took me in his arms and kissed me. He aroused me to the point where I was ready to invite him to stay the night.

I would have done that if we hadn’t heard a loud crash come from the living room. We went to investigate and found that one of my favorite bric-a-bracs, a bust of Ernest Hemingway, had fallen from its perch on one of the bookcases. There was no way this could have happened by accident.It had been pushed off. I immediately knew who the culprit was.

“Jim, do you believe in ghosts?” I asked him.

“No. Why?”

“Because I have one in this house.”

“Really.” Jim looked at me as if I had just announced that I was getting messages from outer space.“What makes you think that?”

“Strange things have been happening,” was all I could think to say under the circumstances.

“You know, it’s getting late, and I promised my Dad I’d go see him tonight.I think I’d better get going.I’ll see you again sometime.”

Jim grabbed his coat and didn’t even wait to put it on. He was out the door that fast.

“Okay, Uncle George,” I snapped, “What’s the big idea?”

“You were going to go to bed with that bastard!” said Uncle George’s disembodied voice.

“Show yourself, dammit! I want to know where you’re coming from.”

Uncle George appeared, sitting in the old recliner. He gave it a shove, and it straightened, letting him stretch out and lie back.

“He only wanted one thing from you,” Uncle George said. “He wanted a one-night stand. I’ve been watching him this week. That’s why you haven’t seen me around here. He has a fiancée already. He’s practicing being unfaithful once he marries her. She’s his boss’s daughter. He’s marrying her for her money.”

“What?”

“I saved you from a bad decision. You’re a pain in the ass, but you’re family, and I kind of like you.You remind me of me. You should thank me instead of looking at me like that!”

“I’m sorry, Uncle George. I didn’t know any of that. He didn’t tell me.”

“Of course, he didn’t tell you.” Uncle George snorted. “Hah!He’s greedy and horny, but he’s not stupid. He had you figured for a quick fling under the sheets, and he almost got it.”

“Thanks for driving him away. But did you have to break my Hemingway bust to do it? I’ve had that for ten years, ever since I was a freshman in college.”

“Sorry about that. I had to get your attention, and it was handy.”

I took a broom and dustpan and quickly swept up the remains of my poor Hemingway bust, then tossed it in the garbage.

Uncle George settled into a new role as friend, protector, and advisor.He was much older than I was, so advising me came naturally to him. He advised me on everything from my computer habits to which plumber to call when the kitchen sink backed up. He was usually right, which could be annoying but was useful most of the time.

His favorite TV show was Law and Order, which was also my favorite, and he liked many of the movies I liked (except romantic comedies, which he could do without), so we spent many evenings watching TV together. If anyone else had been with us, they would have thought I was a candidate for the loony bin, talking to someone who wasn’t there.I was the only person he allowed to see or hear him, and he never made his presence known when anyone else visited me.

One night we were watching Guardians of the Galaxy on a cable movie channel when something happened at the cable company and the channel went dead.

“Dammit,” I said. “We were just at a good part of the movie!”

“You need to ditch this cable company and get FIOS.”

“Can I afford it?”

“Look it up and see. Maybe you can.”

I looked it up online, found that FIOS would cost about as much as cable did now, and decided to switch. I am much happier now. I ordered Guardians of the Galaxy on Amazon Prime Video so Uncle George and I could watch the entire movie. He was happy, and so was I.

I didn’t know this arrangement had to come to an end until, one day, Uncle George informed me he had been told his time on Earth was ending and he had to ascend to the next level, which he hoped would be Heaven, or at least the highest level of Purgatory.

“You mean you have to leave?” I was sad and shocked.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” he answered. “I know you can take care of yourself now, so I’m not leaving you in the lurch. I can stick around for another couple of weeks if you need me.”

“But you’re my best friend!”

“Well, thanks for the compliment, but you need to go out now and get some friends who aren’t dead. I’m not supposed to hang around anymore. I have my own journey to follow, and it means leaving here and going on. Wherever I end up, I’ll be waiting for you, and I’ll be sure to greet you when you pass over, which we hope will be years and years from now.”

Keeping his word, Uncle George stayed two more weeks, then said goodbye to me.

“Goodbye. It’s been nice leaving you my house and being friends with you. I really must go now, though. They’re waiting for me up there, and good things await me. Don’t worry. We’ll see each other again, I’m sure.”

“Goodbye, Uncle George,” I said with tears in my eyes.

“Oh, stop crying! We were friends for a while; now we just have to say a temporary goodbye. Try to be happy for me, will you?”

“Okay, Uncle George.

He slowly disappeared while waving goodbye to me. The house feels empty without him, but there are plenty of new friends to make outside, and I’m ready for them.