Dead Letters(30)
7
Grimacing before I’m even conscious, I wake up earlier than usual, no doubt due to my early bedtime. I feel intensely grateful that I passed out before I drank anything else, or found my cigarettes. I feel rough but not too fragile, and I roll out of bed with just a few groans and false starts. My hair smells like the smoke outside, and my eye makeup is probably halfway down my face, but it’s not like there will be anyone to criticize my appearance downstairs. I knot my silk kimono around my body and sit on my bed for a minute, looking out the window at the fields. Then I gaze around my pristine bedroom, having woken up in it for the second time. Zelda used to tease me, saying that my room looked like it belonged to a middle-aged housewife, all sedate decor and clean corners. I check Zelda’s phone, which has been charging on my nightstand all night. There’s nothing new, a fact for which I am grateful.
I walk by my mother’s bedroom door, and I suspect she’s probably still sleeping. God knows how late she stayed up last night, sobbing into her pillow. I wonder if she does this all the time, or if it’s because she has some fleeting awareness of what’s going on in the house, with Silenus, with…the barn.
Marlon isn’t in the guest room downstairs, which is a surprise. No one in our family is an early riser, and I expected him to be snoring away at this hour, regardless of what time he went to bed. We must be absolutely the worst farmers imaginable, with our inability to crack our eyes open before nine in the morning. I open the fridge door and find some orange juice, which I chug in sincere gratitude.
“Ava Antipova, what on earth do you think you’re doing?” A familiar voice stops me in my tracks, and I slam the cap back on the orange juice instinctively, hiding my face behind the fridge door. Shit.
“Grandma Opal,” I say as I shut the fridge door, leaving me exposed in my thin robe, looking like the mess I am.
“Drinking out of the container, honestly. Your mother…Well, never mind. You look appalling. Come, give me a kiss,” she says. It is not a suggestion.
I cross the kitchen to lean down and hug her tentatively. She’s even smaller than the last time I saw her, and I’m afraid to hug any harder; her bones feel like they’re cracking even with my reluctant squeeze. She smells like her favorite Chanel perfume, and she’s wearing some elaborate turban on her head, with a fringed sweater draped over her expensive-looking maxi dress.
My father’s mother is terrifying, and this provides some insight into why Marlon selected my own mother; they’re not dissimilar. But where my mother is aloof and haughty, Opal is invasive and aggressively nurturing. She likes to touch, to be connected through skin and blood. She’s a micromanager. Whenever she came to stay at Silenus, she would stand behind us while we did the dishes, checking to make sure the glasses didn’t spot. While Marlon was still living with us, we were required to make weekly phone calls to her, during which she would ask us if we’d gotten our periods, how often we brushed our teeth, whether we’d kissed any boys yet. She demanded the recited details of physical intimacy. I tried to hide my shame by mumbling into the phone, avoiding any eavesdroppers. Zelda, on the other hand, never minded our grandmother. When Opal asked Zelda if she had any crushes at school, Zelda told her that she wanted to bone our music teacher, then asked Opal if menopause was affecting her shuffleboard activities. I gawked in disbelief, but Opal laughed uproariously and answered with equal honesty. They had always been kindred spirits, with a fondness for animal-print fabrics and bawdy shock value.
As my grandmother clutches me now, her melted and distorted skin folding off her bejeweled fingers, I imagine that she must be extraordinarily sad. Zelda was her favorite grandchild, unless my father’s most recent brood of offspring has magically supplanted my sister. And just from looking at pictures of Blaze and Bianca, I find that possibility unlikely. Their blond hair always falls in curtains in front of their downturned faces, their eyes glued to iPhones bedecked in sparkling Hello Kitty cases. They always look deeply affronted that they would be required to do anything so undignified as pose for a photo they are not taking themselves. (I have Facebook-stalked their mother and have perused the prolific catalogue of duck-pouted preening they have all too happily offered up to the Inter-gods.) I can easily imagine Opal terrorizing them, and clucking her tongue in dismay over their abstraction, their distance. I picture her pinching the skin of their young bronzed arms, demanding their attention with her clever, wrinkled hands.
“How are you, Grandma?”
“How do you think, Ava? I’m exhausted and upset.”
“I didn’t know you were coming. Marlon didn’t mention it.” I gesture vaguely toward the couch, where Marlon ought to be napping, instead of out ushering his daunting mother to my corner of the world.
“I got in late from Orlando last night and spent the night in the Radisson in Corning. Had to take a cab there. Your father said I shouldn’t fly in until we had made funeral arrangements, but I figured there was a fat chance of that happening without me here to oversee things. I think he didn’t want me to come.” She waves his preference off like the insignificant detail it is. Then, still holding on to me, she pushes me away until I’m at arm’s length, giving me the once-over. “You really don’t look good, Ava. Probably the jet lag, though,” she explains graciously.
“Or the death of my twin.” She flinches, and I feel the day’s first flicker of happiness.