Dead Letters(38)
And so I know what Zelda wants me to say, to acknowledge: I am afraid of intimacy. I sit in her trailer, remembering the day I left for France. My bags were packed, waiting by the door. Nadine was more lucid back then, but stress made her worse, and for days she had been lashing out and disoriented. That day, she fumed around the house, ripe with the awareness that I was abandoning her, leaving her here, but unable to put her finger on why. She was livid and cranky, and my skin was crawling with the desperate need to get out, to get away. Zelda was lurking around the house, uncharacteristically quiet and docile. Manifesting guilt, or as close to it as she could come without ever experiencing guilt. Remorse, maybe. She had even offered to help me pack, a gesture I had greeted with a narrow glare and a hunching of the shoulders. My stomach had turned over when she had offered, and I’d wanted to cry, to tell her she just needed to apologize and repent and I would stay, that this was crazy. All I wanted was for us to look each other in the eyes and acknowledge that that evening after I found them should never have happened, that we couldn’t take it back but maybe we could forget it. But I couldn’t say the words, and she had said nothing more, just slunk off to the kitchen for a mimosa.
Our mother had started her mimosas somewhat earlier, and I knew from her glassy eyes and gingery steps that Nadine was approaching the danger zone, the state between mildly and mindlessly drunk wherein she could marshal enough sobriety to do real damage but was uninhibited enough to not care how much damage was inflicted. Appearing in her room to say goodbye, I felt like she had scheduled her imbibing precisely so that she would be about four drinks in when I was walking out the door, her arsenal primed. She couldn’t always remember what year it was, but she had a warrior’s instinct that guided her even as her conscious mind deteriorated.
The scene was unpleasant, and though Zelda tried to stay out of the way, she was drawn upstairs by the sounds of conflict, a moth to the flame. I didn’t put up much of a defense; I was too tired and heartsick, and I just wanted to retreat to the taxi that was waiting outside to take me to the airport. Mom raged, called me neglectful, ungrateful, cowardly. She said I was a nasty, spoiled little girl who was throwing her toys because she couldn’t have everything she wanted, and I wondered momentarily if Zelda had actually told her about Wyatt, about what had happened between the three of us. Mom said she wouldn’t give me a single penny for my foolish, infantile fantasy, that anyone who abandoned her responsibilities to go for a joy ride was shameful and selfish. And then, finally, she looked at me.
“Ava, I’ve never said this to you, because I didn’t want to hurt you. But even as a child, there was something wrong with you. You didn’t want to be held, or touched, even when you were nursing. You’ve spent your whole life flinching away from real connection, and now, instead of dealing with how you feel, you’re flinching again. Your whole life, you’ve been a cold fish, running from intimacy.” She waved me away then and went to stand by the window, staring out at the lake and refusing to look back at me.
“Bye, Mom,” I managed, and I retreated. In the hall, Zelda was watching me, her eyes shrewd and calculating. I knew she was thinking about whether she could deliver a final blow, if she could find one well-placed word that would break me completely, make me stay. I knew she could find it, if she thought hard enough. “Mercy, Zelda. Just let me go,” I said, looking into her eyes for the first time in months, since learning about Wyatt, since that spring night when we destroyed everything. I expected her to pounce, to read my weakness and lack of spirit and go for the kill, true predator that she was. But she didn’t. She said nothing, just nodded her head and followed me down the stairs. She picked up my suitcase and took it to the taxi, where the driver was waiting impatiently.
“It costs more if you’re running late and I have to sit here,” he informed me.
“Then you can’t possibly care how long it takes her to say goodbye. You’re getting paid,” Zelda snapped, manhandling my suitcase into the trunk. She looked at me, and for half a moment I thought we might actually hug. But I had never really hugged my sister; she had never hugged me. She knew I didn’t like to be touched. And we couldn’t ever touch again, not without that memory resurfacing. We just gazed at each other for a moment, and then I slid into the warm leather of the backseat. I put my earbuds in as the taxi pulled out of the driveway, and without looking back, I knew Zelda had gone into the house, and wasn’t watching me leave.
—
Remembering that scene makes my stomach clench with renewed frustration and helplessness. My mother had been right, of course: I was trying to get away from feelings, from my family. I feared intimacy, deep in my marrow. It was why I had held Wyatt at arm’s length all those years. Why my grandmother made me flinch. Why I had been so completely unable to forgive Zelda for calling my bluff: She was the only person I had ever shared true intimacy with, and she had used it against me in one of her games, trying to force my hand.
I sigh, knowing where she wants me to go. I put another caftan on, and it clings to my humid flesh. I wipe the fragile skin under my eyes with a forceful scoop of my index fingers, trying to clean myself up. Outside, I leave the truck parked in front of the trailer, and I walk up the hill, heading to the house and our mother’s bedroom, wondering what Zelda has left for me there.
10
Just entering the house is a relief after the temperature outdoors, but it’s muggy, even downstairs. Marlon is nowhere to be seen, nor is Opal, and I wonder what they’re getting up to. I’m briefly annoyed that they’ve left Mom alone in the house, but I decide that this is probably just a case of introjection. I’ve internalized her accusations that I’ve abandoned her, neglected my duties, and the whole time I spent in France I’d been feeling the guilt. It’s supposed to be me here, holding down the fort, being responsible, being sensible. Me, with my practical, easily justified B.A. from the Ag school, major in viticulture and enology, conscientiously maintaining the quaint family enterprise while Zelda screwed around, while my father sucked down excellent Pinot Noir in California, while my mother lost her mind. But I took off for Paris, of all the irresponsible places. I broke the rules, and now I’m being punished.