A Book of American Martyrs(198)

It was quite possible, Jenna’s airplane had arrived late at the Detroit airport. Or, Jenna had had trouble with the car rental. Though neither of these could explain why Jenna wasn’t calling them, unless—“Her phone might be dead. You know how distracted she can be.”

They smiled remembering the house on Salt Hill Road. They’d hear the teakettle whistling manically in the kitchen—and there was their mother (whom they would not have dreamt of calling Jenna in those years) upstairs in the drafty room she called her office, typing on the keyboard of an outsized computer, oblivious to the shrieking below.

So cold upstairs, sometimes she’d worn a jacket and gloves.

“Fingerless gloves. Remember?”

“‘Fingerless.’ That was weird.”

“It was. It was weird.”

“Where’d she get them?”

“Don’t know.”

“D’you think—children can’t grasp the concept of fingerless gloves . . .”

“I remember us like ghost children . . .”

“D’you think the house is haunted—by us?”

Each was thinking—We can drive to see the house. Salt Hill Road. Huron Township. After scattering the ashes, we can drive there.

But neither spoke. The prospect of revisiting the house in which their father had not died but in which news of his death had come was too awful.

The smell of death had permeated the house. Some living thing had (literally) died in the basement of the house and the smell had never faded . . .

“D’you remember, the flies in that terrible place?”

“Flies? I’m not sure . . .”

“Upstairs. Inside the walls. You must remember . . .”

“I remember a smell.”

They were silent, shuddering.

In bright autumnal sunshine they were sitting on the wood-plank deck behind their (adjacent) rented rooms in the motel. (Adjacent rooms had been deliberate. Jenna had rented a room in another wing.) They were staring toward the road that curved through marshy mudflats in the direction of the bridge to the mainland on which Jenna would be sighted in her rented car, if Jenna were coming to join them.

A few vehicles had appeared on the bridge, and driven past the motel. Minivans, recreational vehicles. No car with just a single passenger.

Jenna was just slightly more than an hour late. Considering how far she’d had to come from Bennington, Vermont, this was not really late.

And what of Melissa?—it was painful to speak of Melissa.

Very regretful their young sister had been. In terse emails explaining I am so sorry. I am not able to take time from school so far away from Michigan. I will be thinking of you.

It was like Melissa not to sign love, Melissa but only just Melissa.

For a while it had seemed that Melissa would join them, to scatter their father’s ashes on Katechay Island. She had not exactly said yes, but she had not exactly said no.

But it was a long distance to come, from California. This was so. She’d only just flown out the previous month to start the fall term at UC-Berkeley. And it may have been that the prospect of scattering their father’s ashes in this beautiful desolate place didn’t mean so much to Melissa as to the others.

Initially it had seemed that Melissa would go to Bennington College for a liberal arts degree, and live with Jenna in the small town of Bennington, in a house now owned by Jenna and a companion. (Who was this companion? A man? The name was ambiguous—it sounded like Noy.) But then, suddenly it came about that Melissa had been accepted at the University of California at Berkeley with the intention of studying molecular biology.

No one in the family had known that Melissa had even applied to Berkeley. Nor that she had an interest in molecular biology.

As soon as she’d arrived at Berkeley (Naomi had learned) Melissa had joined the Asian Christian Students Association and was living in a residence comprised largely of Asian Christian students. Naomi had not known that such residences existed at Berkeley. She had not known that her sister was so emphatically religious. She had been surprised to learn that Melissa had told their grandparents that she’d been in touch, through the Internet, with her birth mother in Shanghai, and hoped to visit this woman, a stranger to all of the Voorhees, within a few years.

Melissa had been studying Mandarin Chinese in high school. She’d been going to a Baptist church with a school friend, in a suburb of Detroit called Oak Park. She told her grandparents that she felt “most comfortable” with other Christians and “not so comfortable” with non-Christians. In an email to all of the family Melissa had written We accept Jesus as our savior. Jesus is not always pushing, He does not judge us except by our intentions.

Naomi was thinking of how, that day, the last time they’d gone hiking with their father on Katechay Island, she and Melissa had fallen behind. They had not been able to keep up with Daddy and Darren hiking along the coarse pebbly shore where cold soapy-looking waves broke.

Oh Daddy!—wait.

Wait for us. Daddy!

Melissa had clutched at Naomi’s hand. Naomi had held the little hand tight.

But it hadn’t been enough, somehow. Their love for Melissa had not been enough and they had not ever understood why.

Because she was adopted? Because she was of another ethnic background? These were such obvious reasons, you rejected them irritably.