Love Letters to the Dead (32 page)

I saw that it really had made her happy. “Me too.” I smiled.

So later that evening Aunt Amy drove me to Sky’s. When she let me off, I kissed her cheek and thanked her for letting me go, and then I walked up to his door. The bulbs we’d planted in the fall were blooming now—tulips craning their necks all in the same direction, toward where the sun comes up.

I ignored my pounding heart and knocked.

Sky answered. “Hi,” he said. His body in the doorway was like a wall, protecting the house. We stood there in silence for a moment, and I wondered if maybe he’d changed his mind about asking me over.

“So, can I come in?”

Over his shoulder, I could see the shadow of his mother, peering toward the open door. “Skylar, who’s there?”

Finally I just ducked under his arm and stepped inside. The television was on, talking about someone’s dream house. Sky’s mom walked over. She had on her same bathrobe, and her hair was in the same frayed bun. She pointed to the cut tulips from the yard that stood proudly in a vase amid the clutter.

“Did you know if you put a penny in the water it keeps them straight?” she asked.

“Oh,” I said, “no, what a good trick. They’re really pretty.”

She smiled the kind of smile that made it seem as if it had honestly occurred to her to be happy in that moment. But then she just kept looking at me, like she was trying to figure out who I was.

“Mom, it’s Laurel,” Sky said. “You met her before. Outside, when we were planting the flowers.”

“Oh,” she said, “silly me.” But her eyes didn’t flash with recognition. “Can I get you a cup of tea?” she asked, a bit bewildered.

I followed her to the kitchen while she made it. Sky tried to help, but she swatted him away. She performed the ritual with careful, measured steps, as if she had memorized the motions as handles to hold on to, to keep her upright.

When I took the cup and smelled the peppermint steam, she said, “Skylar, I’m going to lie down. I’ll leave you two alone.”

I followed Sky across the squeaky floors to his bedroom. Unlike in the rest of the house, everything in his room had a place. The furniture and posters lined up in straight lines, like they were working hard to form a kind of sense. He had one of your posters, the one from
In Utero
, and one of the Rolling Stones.

Sky propped a pillow against the bedpost and gestured for me to sit down. I arranged myself on the edge of his bed.

“So…” I said.

“So,” he answered.

“So I never really thanked you for the night at the party. And the night at the bridge. And all of that. Thank you. For being there.”

“You’re welcome. I’m glad that you let me.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Do you see her when you look at me? I mean May?”

“No. I see Laurel.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you even love me? I mean, why did you?”

“Because—because you remind me of my first concert. The one I told you about on New Year’s. You remind me of the feeling of wanting to make something.”

My heart twirled around in my chest when he said that, and it wanted to leap into his arms.

“Listen,” he went on, “I’m sorry that I took so long to tell you all of that stuff about May. And I’m sorry that I said it the way I did. But I don’t want you to think … I mean, the way I felt about you, I’ve never felt that way about a girl before. Not your sister or anyone.”

“You know how you said May didn’t have an easy time in high school or whatever? I just always thought that it was different from that. Why didn’t she ever tell me?”

“You were her little sister. She probably wanted to protect you from all of that stuff. She probably wanted you to look up to her.”

Maybe he was right. I thought about the lengths that she went to to make me believe she had wings when we were kids. Maybe May had needed me as much as I needed her. She needed the way I saw her, the way I loved her. “Do you think that I didn’t know her?” I asked. “What if I didn’t really know her?”

“Of course you knew her. You knew her for your whole life. Nothing changes who she was to you. Maybe it’s just when you get older, you understand things that you couldn’t before.”

“I think that after my parents split up, she must have been really angry at them. I mean, my mom spent May’s whole life telling her how she brought our family together. So she must have felt betrayed. Even though of course it wasn’t her fault, maybe she felt like it was. So maybe she was angry at herself, too.”

Sky said, “When she used to talk to me, she’d talk about you sometimes. How she hoped that growing up would be so much easier for you.”

I smiled to think of her saying that, but of course it wasn’t easy. I guess it’s not for anybody. The truth was too sad to feel right away. May couldn’t see how she was letting me get hurt, because she was hurting, too.

“I just want to go back in time and tell her that she could talk to me. That I would understand. That it could get better.”

“I know,” Sky said.

“The only thing I liked about that story you told me,” I said to Sky, “was Paul getting beat up. But I’m sorry that you got kicked out of school. That wasn’t fair.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It wasn’t fair what happened to you, either. Or what happened to her. A lot of things aren’t. I guess we can either be angry about it forever or else we just have to try to make things better with what we have now.”

I looked at him. “Yeah,” I said. “You’re right.”

I didn’t know if I would ever kiss Sky again or not, but it was nice to be able to talk about May with someone who knew her.

I looked up at your
In Utero
poster, with the picture of the winged woman with the see-through skin, watching Sky and me from the wall. I thought about how for a long time, I wanted to be soaring above the earth. I wanted Sky to see me as perfect and beautiful, the way I saw May. But really, we all just have these blood and guts inside of us. And as much as I was hiding from him, I guess part of me also always wanted Sky to see into me—to know the things that I was too scared to tell him. But we aren’t transparent. If we want someone to know us, we have to tell them stuff.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear Allan Lane,

On the way home after school today, Aunt Amy turned to me and asked, “Would you like to come to dinner with Ralph and me tonight?” (Ralph, aka the Jesus Man.)

He never comes to the house, at least not when I’m there, but she’s been seeing him, and the rose soap in the shower has turned into a diminishing pink disk. Maybe after I told her about Sky, she wanted to open up to me, too. Maybe inviting me along was part of her trying to be closer with me, I thought, so I agreed.

When we got home, Aunt Amy went about getting ready, dabbing rose oil behind her ears and taking a faded flower dress out of the dry cleaner bag.

We met Ralph at Furr’s. I thought it was weird that he didn’t pick us up or something, but I didn’t ask any questions. We got there first and waited for him by the door. Finally he walked up with a swagger and kissed Aunt Amy on the cheek. He was wearing knockoff Birkenstocks, jeans with a suit jacket, and had long hair that was scraggly and wavy, as if he were literally trying to look like Jesus.

He shook my hand and said, “You must be Laurel.”

I tried to be polite. “Nice to meet you,” I said with my best smile.

We went through the cafeteria line, and he got chicken fried steak, Salisbury steak, and fried chicken—all at once! Plus cornbread, mashed potatoes, okra, and three kinds of pie. And then, when we got to the end, he let Aunt Amy pay. I mean, he didn’t even try to take out his wallet or something. He didn’t even pretend like he was trying.

When we got to our table, I was poking my fork at my Jell-O, and he said, “Uh-uh. What do you think you are doing, young lady? No eating your food before we pray.”

“I wasn’t eating, I was poking,” I mumbled. But Aunt Amy eyed me nervously, so I didn’t make a fuss.

Then he took Aunt Amy’s and my hands and bowed his head and said, “God bless this food we are about to receive. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”

That was the lamest prayer ever, I thought, for a Jesus Man. Aunt Amy always says something that’s relevant to what’s going on, like she mentions me or our family or May, or what she has to be grateful for, in particular.

Once we started eating, Ralph turned to me and said, “So, how’s school?”

“It’s all right.”

“This is a very difficult time in a young person’s life. A time when the Lord gives you a lot of tests.”

“Yeah, I hope I’m not failing,” I joked.

But I guess it wasn’t that funny. He didn’t laugh. Neither did Aunt Amy. She still looked nervous. Finally he said, “The pitfalls of sin are not something to make light of.”

I won’t bore you with all of the rest, but it went on like that, more or less. I tried to keep up some kind of conversation and to figure out what exactly he was doing here. I guess he’s staying in a church and showing up to all of these services to talk about his journeys. The thing is, Aunt Amy didn’t even seem that happy around him. She didn’t do any Mister Ed impressions, or anything like that. She was just really quiet. And I don’t know if it’s because I was there, but mostly she seemed nervous, like she felt like he was going to get up and leave at any minute.

We finally said good night and got in the car to go home. It was too quiet for a while, until we came to a stoplight and Aunt Amy said, “Thank you for coming, Laurel.” She paused, and then she asked, “What did you think?”

“Do you want me to tell you the truth?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said thinly. “Of course.”

“I think you are too good for him. I mean, way too good for him. Like, he doesn’t even hold a candle to you. I think just ’cause you love God definitely doesn’t mean you have to love him.”

She didn’t get mad or anything. She kept her eyes on the road. And then she finally said, “Thank you for giving me your honest opinion. I appreciate that.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” The light turned green, and she drove down the street, turning into the quiet dark of the neighborhood. She pulled up to the little adobe house that she’s lived in for so many years and turned the car off, but she didn’t get out. I waited to see if she wanted to say something else.

“He’s been asking me for money,” Aunt Amy finally said, “to help fund his next pilgrimage. But I’ve been thinking that I don’t want to give him any more. I could be saving for you instead, for college.”

It felt like one of the most generous things that anyone has ever said to me. Not just because of the money—I know I’ll need a scholarship anyway. But because it meant that she really cares about me, and maybe that she was starting to care about herself in a different way, too. I knew that I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to be lonely for that long, and I wanted her to have someone. I just wanted it to be someone who would really see her.

When we got inside, I asked Aunt Amy, “Do you want to watch
Mister Ed
?”

Aunt Amy smiled and said she did. The theme song came on, and without her even having to ask, I did the horse hoofs on the table and the horse noise with my lips, until she started to laugh.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear Judy Garland,

I always thought of you as a kid. The little girl tap-dancing in the air-conditioned movie theater in the desert. The little girl whose daddy clapped for her and then carried her through the summer night heat to the station wagon. The girl who sang to stop them from fighting. The girl who sang herself to sleep. And then the one who got signed by the movie studio, where they put fake teeth on her and told her she wasn’t pretty. The girl who took the pills they gave her and wore pigtails and did one picture after another. The girl whose voice broke into sobs as she sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” over and over again. You were so tired. But they gave you more pills and told you to keep singing. You kept singing. You were the girl who was about to become a star, just when your daddy died. The little girl whose voice was too big for her body.

But I didn’t know that you grew up and hurt your own kids, too. I watched this movie about you on TV yesterday—a replay of something they made years ago. I know that not everything they say on TV is true. I know. But there you were, with your little girls, girls little like you used to be. You taught them to get up and sing with you. You taught them that applause was the closest thing to love. You taught them that people love you for what they want to see in you, not for what you are. That’s a sad thing to learn. You could have made it different for them.