Six Feet Over It (18 page)

THAT SILVER BRACELET
fused to Dario’s arm is a shiny, beautifully crafted harbinger of doom. He’s constantly touching it, the foreign unease in my stomach as sharp and bright as the light the stupid thing catches as we drive and dig graves, and as he waves out the truck window on each of his hundred trips per day to the post office.

He is happier every day, exponentially so. My fear of the answer keeps me from asking him directly what the hell is up, but I keep a detailed watch just the same, because is he on a Meredith-styled path to the hell away from here?

I hide my disappointment when he steps in the office door at lunch and pushes his hat off his sweaty hair to say, “Hey, okay if we skip driving tonight?”

“Okay.” I shrug. “Sure.”

He smiles. Squeezes my shoulder.

Just twelve weeks until my birthday. Twelve weeks to figure out how not to kill myself and everyone else on the road.

I need to calm down. He is not Meredith. He isn’t leaving.

I’m sad to miss driving not for itself, but for being with him, the only person not currently mad at or hurt by me.

The first twilight stars shine in the blackish-blue beginning of night as I lock the Manderleys and pass behind the mausoleum to the Christmas lights to say good night to Dario and ask if we are driving in the morning.

Boxes. Moving boxes on the trailer lawn, boxes, full of things. Furniture. Everything.

The radio is on, propped in an open trailer window. The BBC, his new favorite.

I hover near the shed. He is shirtless. Only jeans. Dark curls falling in his eyes.

He hops down his two steps to hang his backpacking tent in a tree, then back into the trailer and out with his sleeping bag, and hangs it, too, in the low pine branches.

My heart aches for Emily’s bright orange bag, for her changing into her pajamas inside it.

“It’s not really that fun,” she’d comforted me as she packed last summer. “Girl Scouts is getting kind of boring. I feel like I’m too old.” I lay on her bed, idly organizing her barrettes into color and sparkle groups, wishing so badly I could go camping with her for the week instead of being dragged to Pixley.

“But don’t you get to hike and swim and all that? Make crafts?”

“Well, yeah, the actual camping’s fun, I guess. It’s the during the year part that’s pointless. The meetings. I’m sick of selling cookies.”

“Do
not
cut off my Thin Mints.”

“Whatever, I’ll buy you some!”

“Maybe—What if I could do it with you this year? Go to the meetings and everything? Kai’s better; she might go to school, even. Maybe Wade and Meredith will let me.”

“Oh my gosh, if you get to do stuff, we’ll ditch Girl Scouts and do swim team or something! Would Wade and Meredith go for that?”

I sighed. “God, I don’t know. Maybe after Pixley they’ll calm down and be normal. I hope.”

“Well,” she said, tucking her pajamas down into her backpack, “nothing wrong with a little hope.”

The last sliver of sunlight is gone, only Christmas and lamplight spilling from the trailer windows, and I watch Dario bring out bedsheets, shake them open, cover the boxes and furniture.

I make my dark way to the house, to bed, filled with disbelief but hoping as hard as I can.

Please don’t leave me.

The sun rises over the sheet-covered boxes. I wait by the truck until he comes bright-eyed out the trailer door and tosses me the keys, bracelet gleaming.

“Let’s go!”

Not a word about the boxes, the empty trailer. He climbs in. I drive.

Down into the valleys, up over the hills, through the graves and trees and flowers. I stay on the right side of the road, use my mirrors with precision, shift up and down with finesse.

“You were born to this,” he says. “You’ll get your license and they’ll never see you again—you’ll be off on a million adventures!”

It’s as if he has never met me.
A million adventures.

I park beside the shed.

“Leigh! Isn’t it exciting?”

I take a breath. “Are you leaving?”

“Not for maybe half an hour.” He yawns and steps from the truck to stretch his arms.

“No, your … everything. Is on the lawn.”

He is genuinely puzzled for a moment, then—

“Oh!” he says. “Sorry, I was—Come see.” He takes my hand and pulls me along with him.

The entire length of my arm tingles warm.

Into the trailer, empty but for canvas tarps on the floor, blue tape around the windows.

He pulls a gallon-size paint can to the counter and pries the lid off with a screwdriver.

“Magic!” he whispers.

White.

“No! Wait, that’s primer. Wait!” He taps the lid back down and pulls another can up.

“Okay,
this
is it.”

I peer inside. He stirs the color with a clean stick: bottomless turquoise blue.

A brave color. The color of a sunlit sky. The sunlit sea.

“What do you think?”

I stare into the can. “For the
inside
?”

“Do you like it?”

I consider the walls around us. Paneling, not unlike the office. Dark, fake pressed wood. But here is this paint, this color to make the tiny rooms as bright and beautiful as he has made the outside. To make it a home. To
stay.

I am so relieved, I nearly pass out.

“I love it,” I sigh happily. “I do. It’s so beautiful, I can’t even—I
love
it.”

And then I reach up, heart racing, not thinking, and move my arms around him. Hug him.

He laughs, startled, and hugs me back. “Leigh,” he says. “Everything’s going to be all right. I promise.”

I almost believe him.

First day of school and Kai leaves before dawn to run with Balin, so I eat my toast alone and walk slowly past the trailer, and just as I hoped, Dario comes out to walk with me.

“Just ignore those girls,” he says. “You have lunch money?”

I had to remind Wade and Meredith that Kai and I were off to school this morning.

Through the Manderleys I cross the highway, and he calls from the duck pond, “Hey, want to help me paint tonight?”

“Yes!” I call, my chest a little lighter at the thought.
“Yes!”

He salutes me like a sailor.

By the time first period English begins, I’m so scared I can barely keep my eyes open. I sit in the front row, as close to the teacher’s desk as I can get, and they walk in, see me. Lisa smirks. Caroline glares. They sit in the last row.

Ignore me.

Thank. God.

“Leigh, dear,” Mrs. Edwards sighs, faced with my long-winded, waited-all-summer-to-talk-to-someone-about-it dissertation on how maybe Anna Karenina is right about deserving her crappy husband
and
death because look how selfish she’s being, and PS, those trains are clearly
signs
broadcasting her fast-approaching, inevitable, impending doom, the cruel futility of life even existing at all in the face of death because really, if there’s no escape, what’s the point of any of it. “Perhaps a less Talmudic analysis of the author’s intent might allow you to enjoy the book a little more.” And the predictable chorus of laughter is punctuated by an exasperated sigh from Lisa and a less-than-subtle snicker from Caroline. They do not care that I hear. Still, I pretend not to.

Class ends, the crush of bodies into the hall, I prepare for their ambush—

Nothing. They walk right past me. I do not exist.

All day, every class, nothing.

At the last bell I run to the graves, still alive, never happier to be so invisible, so very inconsequential, to not matter at all.

Maybe Dario really did scare the crap out of them.

Or maybe Elanor was right.

The intense heat has mellowed once more to an Indian summer; still, I keep my office fan blowing. The pleasant hum flutters the sad box of tissues; I try to read and not think about Elanor. Her kindness, her smartness, my dumbness.

Her Emily-ness.

All the ness-es.

Two Pre-Needs, and three hours later Dario steps in and pulls his hat off. I drive through the graves and then to the Christmas lights.

We prime the trailer walls.

The fake paneling is so awful. There’s some crazy varnish on it, but Dario doesn’t want to strip it; he just wants to pile on as many coats of primer as we can, and so we do. Fans blow the warm early-autumn air from the windows and each coat dries quickly. The paneling sucks it up, and we slather on more. Takes forever. The BBC fills us in on various international diplomacy crises. I concentrate on reproducing Dario’s even, vertical brushstrokes, while he periodically tosses me pieces of Pátzcuaro chocolate. The walls are white, white, whiter. We do not talk. We paint. Rollers, brushes. Up, down. Up, down. My shoulders drop; no racing thoughts, no panicked worry. My mind is blessedly quiet, and stays quiet even later as I lie down and actually sleep. Painting primer is my new favorite thing.

All week Lisa and Caroline give me no notice, Dario and I paint coat after coat of primer, and I sleep nearly five amazing hours every night. On Friday afternoon, Dario meets me walking through the Manderleys and idles the truck on his way out.

“Primer’s dry,” he says. “Color tonight?”

“Absolutely,” I answer dreamily, eager for the drowsy, hypnotic painting spell, which maybe is partly due to paint fumes, but who cares. I wish we could ditch the graves and just spend all day painting. “It’s a date.”

“I’ll come get you,” he calls, rolling forward. “Be ready!”

“Where’re you going?”

“Post office!” He waves, turns onto the highway.

Even this doesn’t ruin my mood.

Emily’s grave is piled high with what look like posies. White and pink.

I turn on my office fans, unwrap a few Yorks, fall into some Emily Dickinson, and wait for Dario to come get me.

The Rivendell van passes slowly by the window, Elanor’s mom driving. I strain to see through the trees if Elanor is with her, but she parks down in Serenity. I can’t hold a pen or turn a page; I just sit, heart pounding, and wait until finally the van comes over the valley and back through the Manderleys.

If I had any kind of spine and wasn’t so ashamed, I would go to Rivendell and apologize to Elanor for treating her so horribly, instead of hiding in this stupid office.

I try to read, manage only the same few lines over again and again as the hours drag past.

“Ready to go?” Dario says at last, tossing the truck keys to me.

I drive. We paint.

The color is a little watery with this first pass, not as saturated a blue as swims in the can.

“Just wait,” he says. “You’ll see.”

It dries quickly on the primer. Still, our shoulders are too sore for another coat tonight. It’s Friday, so I linger. He pours us iced sun tea, steeped all day with lemon wedges in a glass gallon jar on his lawn, and we sit before the fans on the newspaper-covered floor to admire our work.

It is late when he walks me over the mistake stones to the house. I creep quietly through the door.

“Leigh!” he whispers.

“What?”

“Be up early to drive?’

“Yes,” I yawn.

“Okay. Good night. Thank you.”

“Good night.”

He walks back through the trees to the Christmas lights.

The house is quiet, just one light on in the kitchen, and I go silently to the bathroom to fill the tub, hot, tons of soap, and sink in. I close my eyes and let my tired arms and shoulders float.

Love will enter cloaked in friendship’s name,
Ovid whispers in the bathwater steam.

I wish I had some Enya.

The bathroom door opens.

“What are you doing?” Kai whispers, pulling a sweatshirt over her pajamas. “It’s after midnight.”

“Nothing,” I say, low, and gather bubbles over me. “Go back to bed.” My ultimate dream in life is quickly becoming having a bathroom of my own.

“Did you just get in?”

“Dario’s painting the trailer. The inside.”

“Really?” She goes to the mirror, picks up a hairbrush. “What color?”

“Blue.”

“Boy blue?”

“I don’t know what ‘boy’ blue means, but it’s like aqua-blue.”

“Oh,
really.
”

“It’s beautiful.”

She nods. “Ana will love that.”

The bathwater is suddenly cold.

“Ana who?” I know damn well who.

“
Ana.
You know, the Bracelet Lady.”

“Why does
she
need to love it?” I ask.

And how would she even see it?

“Have you not
seen
the bracelet? It’s the shiniest thing in America.”

“So?”

“So … it’s totally love jewelry,” Kai says.

This bath is ruined.

“What are you—
Love
jewelry?”

“You don’t give jewelry to a dude unless it’s for love.”

“No,” I say, my voice a little more insistent than I intend. “It’s … she’s a friend of the family; jewelry is her
job;
it’s her thing; she just sent it to him for—”

“
Love.
Love between two
lovers.
I love it.” She brushes her hair, pins it into a Grace Kelly updo.