Dead Letters(108)

“No, Mom. I’m not Zelda. I’m Ava.”





26


Zelda’s words ricochet through my head as I tug inexpertly at the oars. She fills me entirely and she is all I feel, in the emptiness of this lake, of myself. The boat is unwieldy, and I am in desperately bad physical condition. I’m barely even thinking about what I’m doing. I can’t think about what I’m doing, or about what has happened, has been happening. Nadine is hunkered down on the bench opposite me, staring wide-eyed at the surface of the water. It’s a dark complex magenta, catching the sunset in its final moments. My breath comes harder and starts to hitch in my throat as I strain, pulling the boat deeper and deeper into Seneca Lake. I haven’t had a fully conscious thought since I opened Zelda’s letter, and I feel as though I’m not even making choices any longer. Instinctively, I want to put distance between myself and the vineyard, to have a body of water between us. Fleeing across the water, again. The rickety rowboat is proving to be more shipshape than I thought. Zelda. Zelda.

“Mom,” I say softly. I stop rowing, letting the boat coast. My mother turns her wobbly head toward me. “Mommy. What happened to your sister?” At first she doesn’t answer. When she does, her words drag.

“It was an accident. There was nothing I could do.”

“What happened on the beach that day?”

“I don’t remember,” she says, her voice so small that it’s almost as though she has transformed into the eight-year-old she was. I sit silently, watching the angry sun drop swiftly behind the black hills that rim the lake. I can see the fireflies winking from the trees along the shore that we have left behind. In the dark, it’s almost hard to tell which is our dock, which sloping hill has consumed so much of our family. Down the lake, close to Watkins Glen, a large boat cruises north, furiously lit up with fairy lights. It looks like a steamboat from the glory days of boat travel, resplendently anachronistic. Tourists on a booze cruise, eating overcooked crab legs that have been flown in frozen from Alaska.

“Dad was drunk, as usual,” Nadine continues with a shrug, and she trails a finger in the water. “That day, he was just raving. Drinking out of the bottle. He passed out in the sun. Snoring. And Nina said we should sneak off and swim out farther than we were usually allowed.”

“You didn’t go in with her?” I ask, trying not to blame.

“No. I was scared,” my mother says bitterly. “The waves were big that day. I watched Nina’s head bob up and down, and she turned back to wave every now and again. She was too far out. She disappeared into the water, while I watched. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t follow her in. I watched.” She leans over the edge of the boat and smacks the water with her palm, making a violent slapping noise. I’m worried that her movement might sink the boat, but I say nothing, afraid to interrupt her story. Did Zelda know?

“Jesus.” I breathe deeply. Something is happening far back in my throat.

“I would have been a different person, you know. If she had lived. I would have been different. A different mother. Zelda—she reminded me so much of Nina.” We’re silent in the boat, listening to the faint slap of water along the hull.

“You know, you can start all kinds of relationships in your life,” Nadine continues. “But you only start life once. And you start it with a limited number of people. Those people, they do something to you.”

Whatever is in my throat loosens, and I start to cry. At first, tears ooze from my eyes, and I whimper, my back hunched. I sob. Oh God, Zelda. But soon I’m not crying, I’m not weeping. Something is trying to claw its way out of me. I cling to the oars and scream, letting myself lurch between hysteria and rage. I kick the bottom of the boat. My arms fold across my belly, which aches from the muscular exertion of my tears. I cry like a toddler, inconsolable, thrashing, for solid minutes. Zelda, no. Please don’t. Some irrational, wordless part of my brain begs. Begs something nameless for something I can easily name. Please don’t let her be dead. Pleasepleasepleaseplease. I am perfectly fixed on one thought, more precisely concentrated on one thing than I have ever been in my life: a denial of her death. She cannot be dead. Cannot. And, quite simply, she is.

Nadine sits impassively across from me, watching the festive cruise boat come closer and closer to us. I flail and scream until my body finally seems unable to continue its spastic convulsions. I speak to her, to my other self, mumbling to her between screams. After a while, the sheer physical effort of this grief makes me go limp. I feel dead. Maybe I am the dead twin. It is fully dark now, eerie out here on the water by ourselves. The pills still sit in the hull, rattling whenever I shuffle my feet. The boat is still afloat, but I can feel water pooling near my curled toes. I know the horror of loss. It’s unspeakable; I have learned something that can’t be said. Another secret gift from my sister. Nadine leans over dreamily and pats my knee. She is almost smiling. I wipe fluids from my face, my abused eyelids inflated to hood my vision.

“Mom,” I say to her.

“Yes?” she asks.

“What do you want to do, Mom?”

“This is nice, just like this.” She tilts her head back and looks at the stars, grinning. It’s been a long time since I saw her smile like that. “This is just fine.”

“Mom, do you know what I’m asking?” I insist. “I need to know what you want to do. I need you to decide.”