Dead Letters(23)

We emptied the dropper of its salty contents and refilled it with low-fat half-and-half, the richest liquid we could find in the fridge, reheating the makeshift baby bottle in the aging microwave, which Nadine was already beginning to look at suspiciously and accuse of malicious radioactive goings-on. We began a busy feeding schedule for the tiny rodents, and snuck onto the computer to do Internet searches of how to best care for our adopted creatures. Within a day, their wrinkly skin was starting to sag, and they squirmed listlessly, in apparent discomfort, eyelids still sealed shut, unable to see their looming caregivers. Convinced that we weren’t feeding them frequently enough, we upped their caloric intake, working our way through nearly all of the container of half-and-half, most of which ended up dribbling pointlessly into the increasingly squalid wad of material on which the babies lay.

On day two, the first one died. We weren’t certain enough of its death to discard its body, so we left it with its siblings in the box. It had begun to stink, but the scent of sour dairy concealed the aroma of its miniature dead body and the mouse vomit and excrement that had inevitably accrued inside the box. Only when flies began to gather did we acknowledge its demise. I wanted to dispose of its little corpse, but Zelda grabbed my hand with her own.

“We shouldn’t separate it from its brothers and sisters,” she whispered, her eyes glimmering with a curiosity I should have questioned. For whatever reason, I listened to her—perhaps unwilling to recognize my own morbidity, I allowed hers to shine through—and we left the shriveled body in the nest. Its remaining siblings were clearly not doing well, but we continued to fondle and nurse them along, in perverse denial of the fact that we were clearly killing them. I remember trying to convince one to suckle at the eyedropper only to realize that it was dead, its body cooling in my hands. I put it back in the box, and we slid the whole arrangement under the bed. Zelda and I went for a sleepover the following night, and in silent, complicit agreement, we made no plans to deal with our feeble, expiring charges. We felt impossibly guilty, and it seemed somehow as though getting rid of their corpses would make our offense real. The trajectory of this ruinous narrative was so fixed as to seem immutable, and any gesture to avert its recognizable conclusion looked hopeless to the point of quixotic bumbling; we were killing them. So we ignored it. Three days later, when Zelda’s room smelled distinctly ripe, we took the whole box and flung it into the lake without opening the lid. Early on, we had proved to be disastrous caregivers.

I shut my mother’s door softly behind myself and guiltily lock it again. The upstairs of the house is getting hot, even though my mother had it designed to be “energy efficient.” Just another deviation from her plans, to have an upstairs that refuses to stay at room temperature, regardless of the weather.

Curled into the rumpled covers of Zelda’s bed, I pull out her cellphone, and start flipping through it. No new emails. I open her Facebook app and scroll through her news feed. I recognize a lot of the names. Zelda doesn’t have very many friends, and I’m surprised she’s on Facebook at all. Curious, I check her home page, and lo and behold, she joined just six months ago and has posted only a few photos. I flip through them quickly, recognizing only Wyatt. There’s a picture of the two of them out on a boat somewhere—looks like Seneca Lake, though it could be Cayuga. Neither of them is really smiling, though Wyatt has a slight curl to his mouth. His nose is sunburned. In another photo, Zelda is kissing the cheek of a pretty redhead with a spray of freckles. The girl is tall and skinny, with poky collarbones and a coy smile. She’s staring straight at the camera. I have no idea who she is.

The last picture Zelda posted was from the day before the barn burned, June 19. Zelda was photographed in front of Bartoletti Vineyard, the sign looming above her. She stands right in front of the sign, pointing at it with both arms, eyebrows raised meaningfully in an expression I recognize. I read the caption she posted with the photo: “Begin here…for a day of wine tasting.” I look at Zelda’s face again, and I feel a strange certainty that she’s posing for me. That the imperative “Begin here” is directed at me. I study her face, reading mischief. I’m suddenly sure she’s giving me an order. Bartoletti Vineyard is just a few miles away; the Bartolettis were friends with my dad, while he still lived here. I doubt that they’ve kept in touch. Marlon isn’t great with correspondence; “out of sight, out of mind” is basically his mantra, and he is religiously devoted to not looking backward. I get the impression that Marlon left some business unfinished there.

I cast my eyes over the heaps of clothes lying on Zelda’s ragged Turkish rug, scooped up from an estate sale. Zelda loved owning things that belonged to dead people. Half her wardrobe used to belong to someone’s deceased grandmother. I snatch a white-and-turquoise caftan from one pile and put it on. Peering into Zelda’s jewelry box, I see that all her favorite pieces are still nestled inside. Frowning, I put on her chunky silver bangles. Zelda imbued these things with almost talismanic powers; I can’t remember the last time I saw her without those bracelets.

Downstairs, I accidentally wake Marlon, who has been dozing on the couch. He jerks upright with a start and looks at me in revulsion.

“Zelda?” he croaks. I’m tempted to say yes, to play the ghost of Christmas future and warn him that his dissolute ways will only lead him to grief. But looking at his face, I realize he’s already there. He looks broken. Worlds worse than he looked yesterday, as though this place has already aged him.