Postcards from a Dead Girl (3 page)

My dog, Zero, and I are in the living room, staring out the picture window at our street-side mailbox. We're trying to determine if the mail has arrived yet. Normally we'd just walk out to look, but the neighbor kid across the street is in her yard, and she's a talker.

“What do you think?” I ask Zero.

He blinks a few times, feigning disinterest. He's definitely not jumping at the door.

“Me too,” I tell him.

The neighbor kid's name is Mary Jo. She's maybe nine or ten. She stands at the edge of her yard, leaning hard against her mailbox. She does this a lot. The box appears to be growing out of her armpit, attached, cementing her to the ground.

“She's not leaving, you know that,” I tell Zero.

He sighs, and reluctantly rises to all fours.

I open the door and we begin our walk, both of us trying to look focused, preoccupied with a specific mission, exuding great purpose. It doesn't work.

“Hey,” she yells across the street. She stares at me through squinty eyes. It's overcast, but she still squints at me.

“Hi,” I say, and keep walking.

She tilts her head back a notch and looks down at me, as if she's wearing bifocals. “You're a weird one,” she says.

“How's that?”

“You, with the postcards.”

I look in my mailbox to see two new arrivals. It's a little unsettling that they're coming in pairs now: Luxembourg and Austria this time. I think about Gerald the Post Office Guy's warning of tricksters and look back at Mary Jo, who is clearly not exhibiting great respect for her mailbox—she's practically hanging on it. But is this the posture of a serious criminal? Can someone her age be a mastermind?

“How old are you?”

“Ten.”

“Do your parents know you abuse their mailbox?”

“Mailboxes are the property of the U.S. government,” she says, “and I'm not abusing it. It's got a six-foot post that goes into the ground, and my grandfather put it there and he said even a tornado wouldn't move this mailbox.”

“Where's your grandfather now?”

“Florida,” she declares, as if I should be impressed. “I might go live with him someday, because there aren't any kids around here to play with, and I can't leave the yard while my parents are at work, but I do know every cat in the neighborhood. Do you have a cat?”

“Well,” I start, and Zero grumbles, but she talks right over both of us.

“There are seven, and their names are Cinderella, Sparkles, Ginger, Sunshine, Sassafras, Unicorn, and Princess.”

“A cat named Unicorn? Really? That sounds made up.”

She squints at me again. “You're weird. You, with the postcards.”

“What do you know about the postcards?” I ask.

“You know,” she says. “Yooou know,” she sings out.

I think about this. “You're funny,” I say, circling my finger at the side of my head the way kids do to indicate crazy.

“Me,” she says, practically in italics, then jabs her finger hard into her breastbone. “Me?” she says again, her voice laced with cruel implication.

I decide to give Gerald the Post Office Guy another try at explaining my postcard mystery. I think he might have been rushed last time.

I find my place in line, content to watch other customers as they drop off packages or collect their stamps. It's eventually my turn, and no one is behind me. And while I don't have anything to deliver, the more questions I ask the more Gerald seems okay with chatting. He talks to hear the sound of his voice, and I listen for the same reason. His philosophical meanderings are entertaining and there is something comforting about knowing someone is in charge. I ask him about faraway regions, places where deliveries might be difficult or easily botched.

“Alaska's especially challenging,” he says. “It's beautiful, but so remote.”

I nod, fascinated.

“There are parts of Alaska where our guys use snowmobiles.”

“No.”

“Oh yeah. Ever since the Homeland Security Act, parcels that received payment for ground delivery need to stay on the ground. No Cessnas flying those packages. Our guys use snowmobiles.”

Our guys. I like that. Like he's a part of a real team, something bigger, that gets big things done. Like the armed forces, without the arms or force.

“But overall, Air Priority is the best route no matter what you're sending,” Gerald says. “It's a good way to go.”

“I like the good way.”

He smiles, and clears his workspace of paper scraps. Several new customers make their way in through the glass doors.

“Pretty unique ways to deliver,” he says.

Have they considered moose, I wonder.

“Have a good day,” he says.

I walk away to make room for the new customers. After a few steps, I really want to share the moose line with Gerald, so I turn back. But he's already asking a lady if she's sending anything liquid, perishable, or fragile.

At the time of my father's death, my family lived together under one roof. I was twelve and Natalie was sixteen. Mom was figuring out how to manage life with no husband and two kids, and it was tough because there were always reminders that he was gone. Not like photos or old clothes, but less obvious things that couldn't be boxed up or thrown away. They were welcome and crushing at the same time. For months we'd get phone calls from telemarketers asking to talk to Dad. And that wasn't cool at all because whoever answered the phone had to explain.

And there were the more subtle mementos, like the copper pipes. Dad was a plumber, and he had fitted our house with copper pipes, the best kind to use for plumbing. He taught us the virtues of copper piping: versatility, strength, durability in extreme temperatures, biostatic qualities that don't allow bacteria to grow. He talked to us like we were adults, coconspirators in his mission to convert every house in town to copper piping. “You get what you pay for,” he used to tell me, and also “Copper is a little more expensive but worth it in the long run,” and “There's no way we'll use anything but copper in our house.”

I was a bit mystified by my dad's white work truck, how the in
terior was lined with long sections of shiny pipe, the copper color morphing from brown to orange to red in the sun. He was like an alchemist to me, shaping and shifting metals, casting spells on homes by infusing them with his special brand of invincibility.

I used to think that the water we drank was better than our neighbors' because we had copper pipes. It was a great secret I kept from my friends. And for a long time after Dad died, I thought about him every time I turned a faucet.

Other reminders of Dad were literally sent to our house. Junk mail arrived for him daily, which was unsettling at first because he wasn't there to tear it up and grumble about it. But we got used to it. It was weirdly comforting to know that Dad was important enough to have been solicited for cable television and lawn care and someone's vote for office. In a strange way, the junk mail had made us feel he wasn't far away, like there was a fleeting chance he might still be around. We actually missed it when it stopped coming.

But telemarketers were never welcome.

Sometimes I could tell when the phone was for Dad because Mom would mutter something into the receiver and then slam it down. “Who called?” we'd ask. “No one,” my mother would say. Then she'd look at us and repeat it with great conviction. “It was no one.” Just like in the movies, when one character asks another what they'll do now that something terrible has happened, like a plane's pilot dying of a heart attack mid-flight. “What do we do now?” a passenger inevitably asks. “Don't know,” the character answers. Their gaze drifts into the distance and they repeat what they just said, as if repeating it brings a deeper, more serious meaning. “I just don't know.”

I'm doing it again, the car-wash thing. It's raining hard outside and I'm inside my car, which is inside a small cinder-block building. I'm watching the spot-free rinse spill down my windshield, and several feet away the autumn rain is streaming down the windows of the car wash. I can't tell if I'm outside or inside. It doesn't matter. I bought ten car-wash codes and I'm doing laps. There's no line because of the weather, so it's all mine.

A simplicity exists within the touchless system that relaxes me, the way the robot arm works its way around my car in perfect quadrants, spitting pink foam and rinsing with such precision. There is a challenge to getting my car automatically dried in less than the sixty allotted seconds of high-velocity air spewing from the three black throats of the ceiling fans—I'm sure the entire front half of my car is dry when the rainfall spots the hood and it's time to drive back to the beginning.

Zero comes with me sometimes. He's so laid back about everything, but he can barely stop from wetting himself when we do the car wash. If he knew I did laps like this, he would never be able to contain himself. I left him home today.

I like it in here because nobody can reach me on my cell
phone and the four-and-a-half-minute cycle is short enough that there's nothing else to do but sit. I like it in here because my car is clean and there are no postcards. I like it in here because I know where I am and I know where I am going.

Outside, a clearing has cut through the clouds, and through it the sunset is visible. Two cars have already lined up at the car wash; my lone reign is officially over. Good thing the codes are good for thirty days. I finish my last drying cycle and drive down the road. I study the sunset in my peripheral vision.

I've been watching sunsets lately, to see what the big deal is. As a rule, I like them. I respect their beauty and punctuality, and I'll admit to an occasional feeling of awe when the colors are just so. What I mean about the big deal is that so much has been laid on the sunset—heavy-handed metaphors, sentimental music. Everyone's always walking into them, and that is some very intense light. Maybe that's where the term “love is blind” comes from, because so many people are walking into sunsets, burning out their corneas.

Often in the movies, the sunset image is shoved in my face so I'll be sure to know what to feel. I'll admit to enjoying a large number of Westerns that have ended this way. Maybe I've even welled up a little when the cowboy rides off with the girl—a perfect moment, a just life, a popcorn reminder of how things should be. See: “sunsets, riding into the—” My problem is, I'm watching a sunset right now, in all its washed-out oranges and reds and purples. It's like the sun is hiding behind a sky-sized blanket of pastel colors, burning bright enough to let me know it's there, but not enough to be postcard material. And this sunset is in my story, but I'm not sure what to make of it. No music is playing, no girl or horse is hanging around. And while it's pretty to look at, tonight it's what I would describe as lethargic.

There was a time after Mom died and before Natalie got married that I moved out of our childhood home to live with Zoe. The bedroom was described as cozy in the classifieds, which meant tiny. It was a room with a bed in it. Zoe and I liked it that way; we called it our nest.

We found most of our nest décor at The Big Bazaar antique shop, a two-level extravaganza of furniture, knickknacks, and oddities. The main floor was stocked with vintage clothing, old musical instruments, and heirloom dressers. Glass cases displayed various collectible magazines, political buttons, playing cards. The basement had retro-hip curiosities: pachinko machines, jukeboxes, shag rugs, and couch-sized phonograph systems.

During our first visit, Zoe was immediately drawn to an atrocious wood-framed painting that depicted a man rowing a gondola. She held her arms out game-show style to highlight its magnificence. “Perhaps this artifice we shall call ‘The Gondolier' is in favor of your purchase?” she asked in an Italian accent.

“That's terrible.”

“Isn't it? Most people in Venice use
vaporetti
anyway—water
buses. Did you know the city actually stretches across more than one hundred small islands?”

“How do you know these things?” I asked, shaking my head.

She put her arms down but continued to study the painting as I hovered over the glass cases.

I remember thinking while we walked around downstairs: Here we are, shopping for our first home item together, and it just might be a rusty old tuba or a chair shaped like a hand. Fantastic.

We ended up buying a set of heavy red curtains with gold fringe on the bottom. I was happy because they reminded me of a movie theater. Zoe was happy because they made her feel like we were living someplace more exotic than we actually were.

In that cramped little bedroom, we filled the gaps between the mattress and the wall with pillows and layers of blankets. The massive curtains also served as a great way to block out the sun. All that padding made the place almost completely silent, like a well-lined tomb.

I remember once she and I were lying in bed together, her small body spooned in behind mine. My eyes were closed and I could hear her whispering as she lightly ran her fingers up and down my spine. The motion made my skin tighten and chill. I opened my eyes. I wondered if she heard the soft pull of my eyelashes, it was so quiet in there. I stared at the wall before me, and she kept up the hushed tones, the tracing of my skin.

“What are you doing?” I whispered to the wall.

She hummed a random melody, as if I'd never asked the question, and continued to draw odd shapes on my back and shoulders and arms. “I'm memorizing you,” she finally said. She grabbed my right hand and studied it intensely, brushing her palm against
it, gentle repetitions to match her little song. I felt so happy that she'd want to memorize me. I felt like God had given me a gift.

But I knew what she was doing. This was another piece of Zoe's cryptic puzzle that, when finally assembled, would reveal the reality that she and I would not always be together. It had never been explained why this was our destiny, but she said things like this to me on a regular basis, like she was waiting for my departure, that separation was a natural, inevitable stage in our relationship. The funny thing is, I think I finally understand she was right. People never stay together forever. If they don't break up or divorce, one will die first, leaving the other in pain. And Zoe knew.

“What would you do if I were dead?” she'd sometimes ask, usually while standing by the stove if I was cooking, or next to the sink if I was shaving.

“I'd be miserable.”

She'd look around the room and rock on the balls of her feet, building up to what promised to be a hugely philosophical moment. “I'm cute,” she'd say.

“Beautiful,” I'd remind her.

Then she'd stare at me like she thought I was lying. “You'd miss me. A lot.”

“I know,” was my conclusion.

It was times like this, in bed with the memorization game, that Zoe made it clear the puzzle was quickly coming together. Either I was to make a grave mistake or something terrible was to happen to her. Those were our unspoken options. Maybe that's just how I see it now, given everything that's happened.