Postcards from a Dead Girl (5 page)

“You forgot all about me,” a voice cries.

I sit up in bed. My alarm clock rests innocently on its night stand, quiet as can be, so the voice probably woke me again. It's dawn, or near it, as evidenced by the slats of orange light penetrating the window blinds. I shade my eyes. I've got to get some curtains.

“All of you forgot about me,” the voice says. It's my mother, whimpering in an uncharacteristically desperate tone. A whine is more like it, but laden with true grief, real suffering. It's coming from the wine bottle under the stairs. A whine from the wine.

I get out of bed and make my way to the basement, down the carpeted stairs, following the voice. The lilacs that sometimes bloom in my head often accompany her voice, and I guess that makes sense, given how much she loved those flowers, although I'd never tell that to Dr. Singh or Natalie. And while the scent can be disconcerting, her voice is less of a threat, due to its predictability and sheer repetition.

“How could you all forget me?” she asks.

“Nobody forgot about you,” I say. “We could never forget you.”

Her voice changes to a finger-shaking tone. “I don't remem
ber telling anyone that this was okay with me,” she says, “but people do what they want.”

I believe it's better not to respond, so I keep quiet and listen. I'm concerned about committing too much energy arguing with alcoholic beverages.

The bottle is a '67 Bordeaux, plainly labeled with blue print on white paper. My mother's spirit is trapped inside. I know this because I moved the bottle from the bottom rung of my wine rack to another location entirely—under the staircase and behind the box of green army blankets. The voice followed. I heard her muffled crying a second time and was hoping it might be something more acceptable, like a lost kitten or stray squirrel baby, but it was Mom, cooing and whining under the stairs, alone in the dark. I guess she stuck close to this particular bottle because she and my father had kept it as an anniversary gift, never really intending to open it.

I like to think her soul lives inside the bottle, like a genie who might get drunk on occasion, and this would explain her crying spells in the afterlife. She was never much of a complainer. But I wonder if all this afterlife drama is making up for her lackluster departure. She died so suddenly and silently, without warning or fanfare. No last words, no calling out to Jesus.

When I was in middle school, one of the kids in my class died by drowning. I always thought this was a dull way to go, silent and futile, probably with nobody nearby for rescue, hence the drowning part. It sounded so lonely and anticlimactic. So I made a list of exciting ways to die. It went like this:

1. Avalanche
   
2. Massive Explosion
   
3. Lightning Strike
   
4. Plane Crash
   
5. Gang Warfare / Hand-to-Hand Combat
   
6. Shark Attack
   
7. Roller-Coaster Malfunction
   
8. Industrial Turbine Accident
   
9. Spontaneous Combustion
   
10. Death by Fear
    

All of these involve lots of screaming and violence and terror, which seemed to be the best way to go at the time. But when Mom died, it was quick and quiet, like a lightbulb turned off. A flick of the switch. Personally, I would take the switch in a heartbeat now. But Mom was a mover. So maybe she's getting out all her guilty pleasures now, and she's going to cry and moan to me every morning at 6:15 a.m. until she gets it out of her cosmic system. I like the company, but it's hard to explain to others.

“She told me if we saw the sun set enough times,” I tell Zero, “we would eventually forget about her and she would disappear forever.”

Zero sits, staring up at me, seeming to accept and understand.

“She's really worried about this, and she won't be consoled,” I say. “You want some coffee?”

Zero wags his tail. I pour us each a cup of black and sugar. He holds his nose over the coffee and drools through a smile. He's clearly not worried about my ghost story.

“You knew about her before I did, didn't you?” I ask.

Zero lifts his eyebrows, then flattens them out, a little embarrassed.

“So why didn't you tell me?”

He laps up his coffee and sits back on his haunches.

“Didn't want to worry me, eh?” I nod. “Good ol' Zero. Things are worse than they seem, though.”

He's not impressed with my dramatic statement. He walks in circles a few times and lies down, wrapping his tail around himself. He looks up at me with sad eyes and his whole body moves as he sighs.

“I know worry doesn't help anyone, and I also know that I shouldn't be having conversations with you beyond asking you for a walk.”

Zero's tail betrays him with a sudden thumping.

“Cut it out,” I say. “I'm going to have to go away for a little while, do some research. So that means a short stay at Sunnyland Kennel for you.”

Zero's tail stops; he promptly stands on all fours, his body stiff with this unfortunate and unexpected turn of events.

“Unless you want to go to Europe.”

I spread the postcards out before him, picture-side down so he can see all the messages from Zoe. He gazes at them for a few moments, looks up at me, then circles himself again to lay down by the fire, and stares into the flames.

I read once that the reason dogs circle around before they lie down is to trample all the snakes in their grass bed so they can sleep in peace. Zero doesn't look particularly peaceful. I decide to have Natalie take care of him while I'm gone and spare him the tortures of the Sunnyland Kennel.

I cup my hand over the phone and hope Nat can't hear the wailing. But it's too late, she's already asking me what all the noise is about. It's more difficult than you think to disguise the distinct rise-and-fall cry of an English police car.

“Just watching the telly,” I say.

“The
telly
?” she asks with a hard edge of sarcasm.

Nothing gets by Natalie. It's amazing how quickly I've assimilated into London culture, all the way down to their manner of speaking. I wonder if my own sister even knows it's me. It's possible she thinks this is an elaborate prank brought on by someone other than myself—a villain or criminal, a mastermind postal offender.

“Sid?” she asks. “What's going on?”

“Oh I'm just calling to tell you I'm feeling much better. I mean, the smells stopped and all.”

“That's good news.”

“Yeah.” I clap my hand over the phone again. The police car must be going through a roundabout because it's headed back my way, bawling like a baby toward the hotel. Eeeh Aaah Eeeh Aaah. Natalie notices the gap in our conversation.

“Are you sure you're okay?”

“Oh, right. Yes. Brilliant.”

“Uh-huh. And why are you using a phone card?”

“Sorry?”

“The phone card number. It came up on my caller ID.”

I think about this. I can't tell her I'm in the London Hyatt that processed Zoe's first postcards because she will either not believe me or, worse, she will believe me, and as I've said before, she would have me committed in a heartbeat. It's best to keep things simple.

“Oh, the phone card thing,” I say breezily. “I just thought it might be cheaper to use one instead of paying all those long-distance bills.”

“You live two miles away.”

“Right.” So much for simplicity. “I'm actually in the UK on a secret mission to uncover a mail-fraud criminal, and I thought a phone card would be cheaper.”

“Good one. I'm glad to hear you're feeling better,” she says. “What's up?”

“Can you take care of Zero for a couple of days? I'm visiting some friends, and don't want him to panic.”

“Of course. Why didn't you just bring him over? Zero loves it here.”

The truth is, Zero can't stand it at Natalie's house. Her husband, Jake, spends most of his time on the Internet and they have a Siamese cat that sits on the most comfortable furniture and stares at Zero with savage contempt for hours on end. Zero was shocked to be victim to such drawn-out hostilities. He thought cats slept sixteen hours a day. Not this one.

“If you could just stop by and make sure he has food and water, that'd be great. The key is inside the fake rock.”

We wrap up our conversation and I stare out the tall windows of my hotel. The city of London allows itself to be gazed upon like a beautiful woman posing naked for a portrait: full of mystery, hungry for adulation, waiting for something magical to happen.

First, it's the yelling. The man behind the double-thick glass walls shouts something at me, but I swear it's not English. I am in London though, and what else would they be speaking here? I'm at a currency exchange booth, so isn't he required to speak several languages? He yells again and then he starts the pointing. Yelling and pointing. He never looks at me, only down at the sliding glass tray. Next he talks loud and slow, like I'm a dumb foreigner, and I realize he is speaking English, but with a strong accent. The people behind me in line don't verbally complain, but a few shuffle their feet and cough. The man opens the sliding tray again, takes my money, and exchanges it for bills and heavy coins, then waves me out of the way. I'm not sure what just happened, but I'm glad I have money. I'm also glad that Zoe didn't send any postcards from Tokyo or Dubai or Rio because I would really be screwed in a place like that.

After the money confusion, I decide to skip the tube system for now. I head out on foot, cruise the streets, keep my eyes open for Big Ben, Parliament, a post office. I feel suddenly more alive than ever before because I am completely out of place. Everything is new: the cobble of the sidewalks, the reversed flow of
traffic, the big red double-decker buses. The coins in my pocket are heavy; they don't jingle as much as knock together. I'm fascinated by their weight, and I wonder why we Americans have such light money.

Down one street, I see several restaurants and a grocery. A man sits on a blanket in front of the grocery, a cup open and empty before him, waiting for donations. I walk over and drop my heavy coins—three of them—into the cup. They make an amazing thunking noise. He smiles up at me, then taps a sign he's made out of cardboard and marker.
BE GRATEFUL
, it says. I drop two more into the cup. What a great sound.

It's good advice: be grateful. I try to review my list of blessings as often as I can. My parents taught me to do that. Today I'm grateful I have a home, and food, and enough coins in my pocket to give away. Sometimes the list works. Sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes I feel this ache inside over Zoe, and it won't go away. I imagine her sitting down to write these postcards and taking the time to stamp them and carry them off to a post office somewhere in a foreign land. I like to think of her in a cheesy souvenir shop, spinning the postcard towers around in circles, picking out the perfect one just for me—the one she knows will make me smile, the one that will make me think of her.

I create a new gratitude list:

I'm thankful I have lungs.

I'm thankful I can see.

I'm thankful for my dog.

And I am thankful for the postcards, but I still can't understand why Zoe left, why she won't call, why I can't find her, and how to make this ache go away.

The ache sometimes sits inside my rib cage. It feels like I took a cheap shot in a fight. Some days it will creep north and lodge
itself in my throat, where it burns and swells. That's when I'm especially vulnerable, when even if I'm thinking happy thoughts or feeling hopeful, the burning lump makes itself known, a tangible reminder of something missing. A missing part. A missing person. Today I'm grateful the ache is sitting low under my ribs.

I gather up my courage and try out the tube subway system. It's not as complicated as I thought it would be, and with all the posted maps, I don't have to worry about anyone yelling and pointing at me. A recorded omnipresent voice reminds me to “mind the gap,” which I am trying very hard to do. A busker plays a Beatles song, and while everyone else on the train seems annoyed, I find it comforting.

I visit the places I think Zoe might have gone. Piccadilly Circus isn't unlike Times Square with all its flashing lights and noise. There is a Chinatown here too, but it's not the same, it's smaller, it's all wrong. I spend some time in St James's Park, and buy a hot dog from a vendor. Zoe wouldn't let me buy any when we went to Central Park. She would hate that I'm eating meat from a cart.

Inside the phone booth it smells like soup. I'm afraid that the stench is emanating from the receiver, that the last person to use the phone was sick or a messy eater. I do my best to hover the phone a few inches from my face. This makes hearing more difficult on an already faded connection.

“Are you in a tunnel?” Natalie asks. Her voice, oddly enough, sounds like she could be in a tunnel. I picture her talking from one and wonder why she would think I was doing the same.

“Yes, I'm in a tunnel,” I say sarcastically.

“It sounds like you're in a tunnel,” she says, insistent.

“How's Zero?”

“He's fine. I think he misses you.”

“Really?”

“He whines a lot.”

“Sorry.”

“He stares at me sometimes like he's waiting for something.”

“He likes it when you talk to him.”

“Do you ever give him treats?”

“Sometimes. I give him people food sometimes.”

“That's terrible for dogs, you know. It's bad for their hearts.”

“I know.”

“Have you taken him to the vet for his annual? You should make sure he's got all his shots.”

“Yeah, I gotta do that.”

Natalie is silent for a moment, as if she's working something out in her head. “When did you get this dog again? I don't remember when you got the dog.” The way she asks me, it sounds like she already knows the answer, like she's not concerned about the shots but something else.

“I don't know.”

“No?”

I think about it for a moment. “He's been with me for a while, I don't know the exact date.”

“Well that's okay if you can't remember.”

“Did you hear back from the CAT-scan people yet?” I ask.

“They'll call you soon. Are you still feeling funny?”

“No change, really.”

“Hm.”

“What's that?”

“Nothing.”

“No, that noise you made. Hm. You said
hm
. Why'd you say that?”

“It was a nothing noise. It meant nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure,” she says.

“Okay.”

“Are you sure you're not in a tunnel?”

“No tunnel. Listen, I'll be home soon. I'll call you later. Say hi to Zero for me.”

I quickly hang up before she can say anything because I don't like the six-stage good-byes: talk to you soon, have a good night,
take it easy, good night, bye, good-bye. A Buddhist friend of mine from college never said good-bye to anyone because he believed that saying it meant saying good-bye to their spirit. He was always ending phone conversations abruptly or leaving unexpectedly. You only say good-bye when someone dies, he told me, so their spirit can leave and be at peace.