Love Letters to the Dead (5 page)

I remembered how May would sneak out at night and I’d wait up in bed until I heard her come back in. Usually I’d just listen to her tiptoe down the hall and close her door, and then I’d know that I could sleep because she was safe. But once in a while, and this is what I loved the best, she’d come to my room instead and whisper, “Are you up?” My eyes would pop open, and I’d whisper that I was, and she’d come to lie on my bed. I remembered how her breath would smell sweet and hot, like alcohol, I guess. How a smile would spread slowly across her face and she’d laugh in a whisper and slur her words a little, like every sound led into another. As she’d tell me about her adventures—the boys and the kissing and the fast cars—I pictured it sort of like I did when we were little kids, when I believed that May had fairy wings and I’d imagine her on her flights through the night, swooping under the stars.

When I looked up from where I was on the hammock, all of a sudden the stars started buzzing too loudly, and I didn’t feel right. I wondered if this was what it was really like for May on those nights, if the stars spun around her until she was dizzy and she didn’t know where she was anymore.

I was scared suddenly and I couldn’t keep my head straight. I worried that bad things were coming into my mind, so I went to find Hannah and Natalie. When I walked through the wooden gate into the backyard, I saw them there on the trampoline. They were kissing. Real kissing. And jumping all at the same time. They looked up for an instant and saw me watching, and then they kind of fell. Natalie started screaming. She had chipped her tooth on Hannah’s tooth. She started looking everywhere for the lost piece of her tooth. I tried to help find it, but it was nowhere on the smooth black surface of the trampoline, and it was nowhere in the dirt. She got worried that she swallowed it. And Hannah got worried that I would tell everyone at school what Natalie had been doing when she chipped her tooth, even though I swore I wouldn’t. Hannah started telling me I had to kiss Natalie, too, or else I would tell. I couldn’t be the only one who wasn’t kissing, she said. But I didn’t want to. They weren’t listening. Natalie grabbed me and said she was going to kiss me to seal the secret. Suddenly it was hard for me to breathe. I gasped for air. I ran.

I ended up in the park near school. I sat down on the swing and started swinging as high as I could, higher and higher, until it felt like the night was rushing into me, until it felt like I would go all the way over the bar. And then I jumped, and flew, and landed in the sand. I climbed onto a jungle gym like the one that used to be our ship when I would go to the park with Mom and May. We had to sail through a sea full of sea monsters to rescue the mermaids. And I started to cry.

The air smelled like fire smoke and fall leaves. It smelled a way that makes you feel how the world is right up close, rubbing against you. My head was starting to really hurt. It was late, and I didn’t know what to do, so I went back to Natalie’s. She and Hannah were asleep on the trampoline. I crawled underneath and slept on the ground.

The next day when we woke up with dew on our clothes, Natalie’s mom was making pancakes and bacon and called us in for breakfast. It smelled in the kitchen the way you want home to be. She said we were silly girls for sleeping outside. She was being nice, I think, because of her date. Natalie’s mom doesn’t look like other moms. Natalie said she works as a secretary in a law office, but for the weekend morning, she was wearing a shirt knotted above her belly button with cutoffs, and her dark hair up in a high ponytail. We all ate and were pretty quiet, just answering her mom’s questions, which were too cheerful. When she asked Natalie, “What happened to your tooth?” Natalie looked nervous for a minute. I knew it was my chance to show her I would keep their secret, so I said, “We got burgers from McDonald’s, and hers had a bone in it!” Hannah started laughing and said, “Sick, huh?!” I think since her mom felt guilty about sleeping over at her date’s house, she didn’t notice that we were guilty, too. Hannah picked a leaf out of my hair and handed it to me. Its veins threaded in tiny patterns through the yellow skin.

We never talked about the kissing, and at school on Monday, we acted normal. I made sure to have enough money for Nutter Butters at lunch, and I shared them with my friends. I looked at Sky and laughed when Hannah said he was undressing me in his mind. It was like nothing had happened. I tried not to, but I noticed the tiny piece of one of Natalie’s perfect teeth missing.

Kurt, I have this feeling like you know May, and Hannah and Natalie, and me, too. Like you can see into us. You sang the fear, and the anger, and all of the feelings that people are afraid to admit to. Even me. But I know you didn’t want to be our hero. You didn’t want to be an idol. You just wanted to be yourself. You just wanted us to hear the music.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear Judy Garland,

When parents talk about their pasts, the stories start to stick in your head. But the memories that you inherit look different from the now-world, and different from your own memories, too. Like they have a color all their own. I don’t mean sepia-toned or something. My parents aren’t even that old. I just mean that there is something particular about their glow.

When I think of the stories that I know about your childhood and your family, I see them in almost the same color that I see my parents’ stories. I’m not sure why, but maybe it has to do with the happy-sad of it all. Or maybe it’s because of how my mom used to say that your movies gave her hope when she was younger.

She loved to watch them with us, so I don’t only know you from
The Wizard Of Oz
. We saw you in everything—
Easter Parade
,
Babes on Broadway
,
Meet Me in St. Louis
. On movie nights, May and I used to get up from the couch and sing along with you—
“Zing zing zing went my heartstrings,”
May would belt out as she pranced through the living room.

Mom said that when she was a little girl, she wanted to be like you. My dad came from a pretty perfect family, but Mom didn’t, and maybe that was the biggest difference between them. Mom grew up here, in Albuquerque. She never told us specifics, but her own mom (who died when I was little) was more or less an alcoholic, and I think her dad was pretty hard on her and Aunt Amy before he got cancer. He died when she was eighteen and Aunt Amy was twenty-one. Afterward, Mom’s mom kept drinking too much, Aunt Amy found God and got a job as a waitress, and Mom moved into a studio apartment and got a bartending job so she could start saving up money to go to California to follow her dream of becoming an actress.

In the meantime, she took acting classes and starred in shows at the local theater. Her best part came right after her twentieth birthday. She played Cosette in
Les Mis
, and the papers gave her rave reviews. She saved them in a scrapbook that she used to show to us when we were kids.

One night, Dad stopped into the bar where Mom worked. He was passing through town, back in what he called his “wild days,” when he rode his motorcycle across the country. Based on the old pictures, May and I thought he was quite a stud. Mom must have thought he was, too, because when he came into the bar, she asked him to come and see her in
Les Mis
the next night.

Dad said it only took the length of the performance for him to fall in love. When it was over, he was waiting outside of Mom’s dressing room with a bouquet of daisies. She invited him over to her apartment, and they stayed up late, stargazing on the roof of the building and talking. After that, Dad found a job in town working on a construction crew for a new hotel, and he saw Mom as much as he could. They rode the tramway to the top of the mountains, watched the watermelon-colored sunsets, and danced in Mom’s little studio to Beatles songs. Four months later, Mom found out she was pregnant with May, and they decided to get married.

When Mom told the story, she said that she’d always wanted a home, but it wasn’t until she had us that she knew what that meant. Now that I’m writing it down to tell you, it seems like a tragedy. But when we were growing up, we thought it was romantic. May would ask to hear the story over and over, and Mom loved to tell May how she was the spark that started it all. “You were ready to come into the world, and so you did. We have you to thank for us, baby girl.”

When we were little, Mom still used to go to auditions sometimes for theater productions or local commercials. Once she got a part in a commercial for the Rio Grande Credit Union. They shot her waking up on the steps of a new house in her pajamas, saying, “Am I dreaming?” Then a lady dressed as the credit union fairy drops keys into her hand. We’d squeal when the ad came on TV, saying, “Look, it’s you, Mommy!”

But mostly the auditions didn’t work out, and she’d come home like a balloon whose air had been let out. Eventually, she said that she’d missed her window, and that if you want to be a real actress, you have to live in California. She took up painting instead and got a job filing papers in a doctor’s office. She said that she thought being a mom was her real job. She said that we were her greatest accomplishment.

Mom would say all the time how she wanted us to have happy childhoods, happier than her own. Sometimes she’d ask us if we were happy, and we’d always say yes. Still, she said that she wished she could give us more. She liked to talk about somedays. Someday we’ll have a house with a pool. Someday we’ll learn to ride horses. Someday we’ll have beautiful dresses with sequins head to toe, like the ones on TV. Someday we’ll go to California. We’ll see the ocean together.

She and May and I used to talk about it, planning the perfect road trip. Mom would say that the waves sound better than trains at night and better than rain and better than a crackling fire. We used to plan how, when we had the money, we’d get on I–40 and just drive. We’d stop along the way at Arby’s for “roast beast” sandwiches (we called them that because of
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
). We’d get a hotel room and stay up all night watching movies and drinking sodas with ice from the ice maker, and the next day, we’d drive all the way to where the land meets the water.

But as it turned out, Mom went without us. She cried when she told me. “I have to go away for a while. I’m so sorry,” she said. “I just can’t be here right now.” As she tried to hug me, I felt frozen in her arms. I wanted to tell her she was breaking the promise. We were all supposed to go together. Of course it was too late for that, but I wondered why she didn’t at least offer to take me with her. She said she’d get her head back on and her heart sewn as best she could and come back soon. She never said when soon is.

Now she’s just a voice on the phone. She called me at Aunt Amy’s a couple of hours ago. “Hi, Laurel. How are you, sweetie?”

“Okay. How are you?” I tried to picture where she is, but all I could see in my mind was a faded postcard—skinny palm trees rising into a pale blue sky.

“I’m okay. I miss you, honey.” She sniffled, and my body tensed up. I thought,
Don’t cry don’t cry.
I hate it when Mom cries. May knew how to make her stop, but I never did.

“Yeah, I miss you, too.”

“How is school? What did you do today?”

“The usual. Went to classes.”

“Are you making new friends?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“That’s good. I’m happy for you.”

And then there was a long silence. I didn’t know what to say to her.

“Mom, I should go. I have homework.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“You too.”

I hung up, and just like that, Mom vanished back into the land of washed-out palm trees.

Judy, I read that you said your first memory was music. Music that fills up a home. And one day, suddenly the music could escape through a window. For the rest of your life, you had to chase it.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear Janis Joplin,

I am writing to you for an important reason, which I will get to. When I walked up to our table at lunch yesterday, Hannah was talking to some of the soccer boys who’d made their way over, and Natalie was squeezing the last of her Capri Sun out of its package, not looking interested. I sat on the end of the bench and scanned the crowd for Sky. I finally spotted the back of his head at the edge of a crowd of juniors. He hadn’t noticed me, so I turned back to the table and started contemplating whether or not to break out my kaiser roll in public. Then as Hannah laughed with the boys, I noticed her brush her hand against Natalie’s arm, like it was meant to be an accident, but in slow motion. Natalie sucked in her breath and closed her eyes for a second. Suddenly, she interrupted Hannah’s conversation and said, “Come on, let’s go to the alley.” I got worried that they were going to leave me alone and I would have to go back to sitting by the fence, but Natalie looked at me and said, “Come on!” So I followed them. The alley, everyone knows, is where you go to smoke cigarettes and things if you are either cool or a senior.