Postcards from a Dead Girl (17 page)

It was summer when Zoe and I moved in together. Balmy heat. Sticky skin and heavy lungs. Our little love nest was not receiving the cross-breeze we were promised by the landlord. Instead, stale air. I wanted to be as stationary as possible, so I sat at the foot of our futon: slumped shoulders, mouth slack, as if this might make breathing easier. There I sat, waiting for the night to arrive and deliver its cool air.

Zoe was doing something unnecessary in the kitchen. She'd been moving about a lot that day, even in the heat, pacing between the bedroom and the kitchen and the bathroom. Doing nothing tasks. Wiping counters. Rinsing clean dishes. Rearranging items in the fridge. Putting them back as she had found them. Finally, she stopped with the fidgeting.

“Do you remember what your most recent love note said to me?” she called out.

It took a moment for my brain to turn back on. “What?”

“You said you loved doing anything with me.”

“I do.”

“And then you listed everything we do together.”

“Yeah?” By this time, I had slouched into the kitchen. She
stood with her arms crossed, looking out the window, a dishrag hanging from one hand.

She turned to look at me then, an accusatory glare. “Do you know what the list was?”

I looked up at the ceiling, then back at her. I waited for her to tell me.

“Watching TV. Sitting on the couch. Eating dinner.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well?” she asked.

“Sorry for enjoying those things with you?”

“We don't
do
anything,” she said, and snapped the dishrag in the air. “We sit on the couch. Watch TV.”

“Eat dinner,” I added.

She took a deep breath and let her cheeks inflate with the exhale.

“You've been thinking about this for a while,” I said.

“I need to see more.”

“All right.”

“I need to see a lot more.”

“All right!”

“Sid, I want to travel,” she said. “I want to see everything.” She twisted the rag in her hands.

“That's a lot.”

She shook her head. “I knew you wouldn't get it.”

“I'm sorry. What do you want to see? Tell me.”

“I want to see the streets of London, the cafés of Paris, the churches of Barcelona, the rain forests of Costa Rica. There's so much out there. I want to get out of here. I don't want to sit on this couch ever again.”

“Let's do it.”

She looked around the apartment, at the walls, at the floor. “You don't really want that,” she said, then looked back at me again.

“Sure I do.” Her eyebrows rose a little, almost in a hopeful expression, but then it changed to something else, something I didn't recognize. I tried to get back the hopeful expression. “Let's start in Costa Rica,” I offered. “Mountains and oceans, hiking and surfing. It'd be great! I hear the monkeys come right up to you like deer at a petting zoo. I love monkeys.”

“I don't mean—I mean, I guess I don't want that. I think I need to do this alone.”

“You want to travel the world alone?”

She nodded. I stared at the floor. She was right; I didn't want that. I didn't want her to travel the world alone, and I didn't really see how anyone could want that—to be alone. Maybe there was something I was missing. “Well that's the last Hallmark card I write my own message on, that's for sure.”

Her expression remained serious. “I'm sorry. I've always felt like I don't belong here, like where I should really be is a million miles from here. I need to go there.”

“That's pretty far.”

“Please try to understand,” she said.

I thought at the time that her need to explore might be due to my problem with sustaining happiness, although I never found out if she even knew that it was a problem. But there were times when Zoe and I would be having a happy moment, a sweet occasion like a shared laugh, or simply walking down a sidewalk hand in hand after a movie. And maybe we would exchange an inside joke and smile and kiss and blush like teenagers, or stroll along with the confidence of trusting lovers. When experiencing these moments, my imagination would often take over and finish
the scene with something dreadful. A van careening around the corner and masked men kidnapping Zoe at knifepoint. A street thug snatching her purse and shooting us dead. A homeless man asking for money, and after we drop a coin in his coffers, he tosses acid in our faces; screaming, we clutch at our melting flesh.

Sometimes when Zoe and I were lying in bed, we'd spoon and drift off to sleep, but my body would twitch and I'd be awake again. I'd sit straight up and look down at her, waiting for her to tell me the news she'd been hiding for weeks but had been afraid to reveal. “What is it,” I'd ask. “What is it already?” And then she'd look up at me with teary, red eyes. “I'm dying,” she'd say, “I've only got three weeks to live. I don't know how else to say it.” And then we'd sit there together, hugging each other, staring at the walls, waiting for them to whisper answers to us, because we wouldn't have any and there would be nothing else to do.

During our trip to Manhattan, Zoe and I had coffee at a sidewalk café. We were enjoying ourselves tremendously, watching the people, feeling the hum of the city, listening to the languages float by. And this guy kept looking over at us, studying something about us, something that was more interesting to him than the other millions of people on the island. And soon my thought became that he was sizing us up. We were clearly tourists, and after we finished our coffees, we were sure to be stabbed in the park. And why? Because the happy moment was lasting all day long. It was an endless happy moment, an inexplicable thing I didn't trust—something so extraordinary and awesome that only a complicated, paranoid evil plot could balance out the universe.

So when Zoe asked me to understand about her wanting to travel alone, I nodded. This would make her happy, and maybe she could sustain it better without me around. She touched my shoulder and let her hand slide down my arm until she was hold
ing my hand, and I agreed to try to understand, and I went about pretending it was okay that she wanted to be a million miles away without me.

From then on, the only distance covered was the space between our conversations. When we did talk, it was usually about a new culture or language, or a city that neither of us had visited. Places nobody in our entire hometown had ever visited.
National Geographic
stuff. Impressive-looking locations. I really did try to understand, but I don't think I ever got there. What I am beginning to understand is that Zoe never got to where she wanted to go, either. She didn't make it a thousand miles, let alone a million. In fact, she stopped about three hundred feet from the Highway 20 overpass. That's what the police report said, anyway. I should ask Zero. He was there.

Melanie and I agree to meet at The Basement; it's our familiar safe ground. The dining section is quiet and intimate, with steel-brushed, round metal tables and chairs with funky fabric patterns. A single purple flower stands in the vase on the table, the only thing between us, besides the table itself.

Melanie looks so alive, I find myself staring at her. I've spent so much time studying her from afar, I forget to engage in conversation. It's like I've upped my binocular magnification, lucky enough to get a better view, but confounded by what to make of the new landscape. Me and Melanie and a purple flower in a vase.

We get the awkward, obvious stuff out of the way. The good-to-see-yous and the I'm-glad-you-could-make-its. I hold out my injured hand and tell her I tripped and sprained my pinky finger. My vulnerable state gives us both an advantage; we have something to laugh at together. I'm such a klutz! And then we're off.

“Your sister told me a lot about you,” she offers.

I'm not sure this is a good start. “Hope it was good,” I quip, and we laugh a little too long, and I want to say, No, really, I hope it was good, but I slurp at my ice water instead.

“She's a good egg, your sister. She cares about you.”

“Yeah,” I say, and start counting in my head the number of times Natalie refused my calls this week. More ice water.

“I've only known her a few months,” she says and smiles. “But sometimes you can tell when you've met a good person.”

“Yeah,” I say, and think: I know exactly what you mean. I smile back. “I know exactly what you mean,” I say. She looks at the flower and smiles again, a declaration of goodness: this is going well so far.

She tells me much more as the night goes on.

Some things verbally: she likes going out to movies instead of renting because she likes the smell of popcorn even though she doesn't eat any; she listens to classical music in the car, but sings out loud—poorly—when Guns N' Roses is on the radio; she loves to stare at the stars for hours, usually at predawn because this is when the earth is at its most still; she practices yoga during this silent time at Jasmine Beach, right before sunrise, every morning, no matter what is going on in the world. “The sun is so beautiful at dawn, Sid,” she tells me. “You should see it sometime.” I imagine the two of us sitting on the beach at sunrise, our eyes closed as the sun reveals its light and warmth. The two of us, breathing slowly and deliberately, holding our lotus position with great conviction, levitating above the Jasmine sand.

Other things she says nonverbally: laughing at my unfunny jokes, playing with her hair occasionally, smiling into the purple flower on the table as if it's the source of her good fortune to be enjoying herself so much, so unexpectedly.

Time moves faster than it should. A breezy, magical experience I'd forgotten about. And as I walk away from the café and Melanie walks in the opposite direction, I think about our inevitable second date, but I find myself unconsciously anticipating
loud noises and mistakes, slipping and silences. “Let's do this again” plays over in my ears, but I'm also speculating if tonight is the night the stringy things attack my cerebral cortex. We will have dinner again soon, and while I can't wait, something inside me is fighting.

It doesn't help that, when I pull in my driveway, the door to the mailbox has been left open. That can only mean two things: someone took my mail or the mailman left it open. I can't imagine how either might happen. My trepidation deepens when I see what's inside—a single bright orange postcard with huge blue letters that read:
COSTA RICA
! I flip it over, and in that signature frilly penmanship it asks: “Do you know the way to San Jose?”

I shove it back in the mailbox, shut the door, and hold it closed. As if by pure determination I will make it disappear. I think of the inspirational posters on the walls of Wanderlust.
Create your own destiny! If you can conceive it, you can achieve it!
I take a deep breath and open the door again: still there. I snatch the postcard and slip it in my back pocket. I look around for witnesses, march straight inside the house, back to my bedroom, and kneel down beside the mattress. I pull out the box of postcards, toss in the latest, cover it back up, and push it back under. I lay down, exhausted.

I take a few more deep breaths to relax, like I learned on Cherry Hill. But what I'm trying to avoid comes anyway, as if by wishing it away I have actually wished it closer. Time pulls thin like saltwater taffy. Lilac candy fills the room with its sweet aroma, heady fluff spinning through the air like smiling faeries dancing in a sugarplum daydream until I fade away.

In my dreams, Melanie and I ride a Jet Ski over dark waters at night. It's cold. Lightning flashes in the distance. We're trying to reach land, but it's not visible.

I squeeze the throttle; Melanie squeezes me. Our Jet Ski slaps down hard on wave after wave; the icy sea-spray stings our faces. Growing numb from the plunging temperatures, I wonder if we'll make it.

Suddenly, our Jet Ski picks up speed, as if a weight has been lifted. We cruise over the water effortlessly and the horizon reveals itself. I turn back to tell Melanie we're almost home, but she's not behind me anymore. She's a hundred yards back, a speck in the sea.

I maneuver the bike around and head straight toward her, and that's when I see it: the dip in the level of the ocean, the circular pattern, a vortex of rushing water, and Melanie, swirling helpless in the clutches of a giant whirlpool.

I want to motor in and save her, but the Jet Ski will never make it out. I want to tell her there is no way I could have predicted this total nautical anomaly. I want to tell her how sorry I am, that it's all my fault. But I can only watch in horror as she rides the spiral downward.

We're here again, together, sitting in a restaurant across from one another. This time the flower between us is red, and it's not one but several—a bouquet of paper flowers, a harbinger of abundance. The Chinese Moon is not a place either of us has dined, but we've both heard good things about its authentic food. If the elaborate fan-folded napkins are any measure of quality, I'd say we're in for an exceptional culinary experience. A neon moon decorates the far wall, but it's unlighted. I mention this to Melanie. She tells me that according to her friend, the neon moon mimics the lunar cycle of the real moon, and because it's a new moon, it's kept dark.

“The new moon is when the Chinese New Year begins,” she says. “It's good luck, I think. New beginnings and all that.” She smiles and studies the menu.

The smells emanating from the kitchen tap into my main-line memories, and I begin to feel like I'm in Chinatown again, forever ago. Behind me, the kitchen doors swing open, followed by a barrage of authentic dialect. Rapid-fire vowels with hard edges sing through the dining room and cease just as suddenly when
the kitchen doors swing closed. Did someone say,
“Ning maa?”
I go for the ice water.

Looking directly at Melanie puts me at ease. It's her hair, I think: chocolate brown, no streaks of color, no blue or pink or purple. I decide my best plan of action is to fully engage the conversation. If I'm talking, I'm not thinking. And, in fact, after we order a pot of oolong tea, I find that I can't stop talking.

“Do you believe in old souls?” I ask.

“Oh I don't know. Souls, yes. Old and young ones? I suppose.”

“People often tell me I'm an old soul.”

“Oh?”

“It's the strangest thing. I don't get it.”

Melanie sips her tea. “Well I imagine that would be seen as a compliment,” she says, and smiles, and sips.

I play with the paper flowers. “These are nice,” I say. “A nice red. Or burgundy, maybe, or crimson.”

“They're crimson.”

“Crimson and clover,” I say. “Over and over,” I continue, and then laugh. I feel like I'm blathering on like an idiot and say as much, but she keeps assuring me she enjoys listening to me.

We both nod and sip and are quiet for a moment, but I have an uncontrollable urge to talk about everything. I can feel it rising in me like an unstoppable tide—a slow but steady surge of intimate details and boring stories and memories and—oh God no-philosophies on life.

“I have a friend who believes you shouldn't say good-bye to people,” I say, “because that means you're saying good-bye to their spirit.”

And Melanie doesn't seem repelled by the comment; in fact she seems to be ingesting it and thinking—not talking—about
this idea. But before she can share her thoughts, I'm on to another one.

“Some people believe if you're taken prematurely from life on Earth, you might hang around as a ghost until you get what you need to move on to the next life.”

Melanie looks at me for a few seconds, considering this last declaration, and opens her mouth to respond, but I've got something else to say.

“Did you know that spirits often talk to mediums in symbols so the medium must not only make contact with the spirit but then translate the symbols to find meaning in the spirit's living counterpart?”

And,

“I used to think that the most exciting way to die was by avalanche.”

And,

“Copper is the best choice for plumbing pipes due to the metal's durability and biostatic properties.”

And,

“Fusiform cerebral aneurysms are not actually as dangerous as you might think.”

And,

“Moor peat mud is rich in the clays and minerals known to reduce inflammation of the nerves and improve epidermal health.”

And,

“There are over 25,000 objects in the sky above us right now floating in space.”

And,

Dear God. I can't shut up.

I apologize for talking so much, but Melanie says she likes it
when I talk, and brushes her hair out of her face. And I read once that if a girl plays with her hair when you're on a date, that means she's attracted to you. But the tide is reaching its high point, and who knows what else I might say to her. I excuse myself to the restroom.

Inside a stall, I brace my hands against the walls to maintain a standing position. I feel the tide ebbing, but not nearly as fast as I need it to ebb. The quiet of the restroom has given me a break from myself, but I can't believe all the things I've said. “Epidermal health?” I ask out loud to make sure I really said it. The question is full of reverb.

Maybe five minutes go by and I still feel full of words. Scenes and stories want out, to be told into existence, like dying stars gasping for their last light. But I can't scare this girl any more than I already have. I've spent weeks dreaming of coming to her rescue and now I'm here with the real Melanie and I'm drowning instead of helping. Maybe she's not the one who needs saving. I take a few deep, yogic breaths and walk back out to the dining room.

The lights have dimmed, indicating another level of evening—a deeper intimacy here at The Chinese Moon. Melanie isn't at our table. I look back to the restrooms in case she's taken a trip herself, but the waiter's expression explains it all: she's gone.

Her absence leaves me with a momentary sense of relief, the tide has completely ebbed now. But it's replaced by the stinking death of stranded sea life, and it makes me a little sick.

“What time is it?” I ask the waiter.

“Your date left five minutes ago, sir,” he says. He tells me I've been gone over half an hour.

For a brief moment, I wonder if she's waiting for me on the
sidewalk outside, but she's better than that. I look at the red table flowers, which don't seem so abundant now that I've probably blown my last chance. What is wrong with me?

“How would you like to pay?” the waiter asks, and I reach for my credit card, knowing that it will never go through.