Dead Letters(63)

“Nonsense. Zelda has been here the whole time. What would she do in France?” Nadine waves imperiously and sucks down the rest of her drink. “A refill, Ava. Thank you.” I pour the lemonade into her glass but keep the gin next to me. Nadine lowers her sunglasses, looking from the pitcher to the bottle with an eloquent arch to her eyebrows.

“We’re out of gin,” I say, moving the bottle onto the floor next to my foot.

“Don’t be childish, Ava. Hand me the bottle.”

“Sorry, Mom, doctor’s orders. You’ve got to take it easy.” If I’m having an off day, she can afford to slow down on her cirrhosis too. She glares at me, then shoves her half-finished plate of food toward the center of the table in a huff. I am forcibly reminded of Zelda at age six.

“So no one knows a thing about Zelda taking off on a wee vacation?” I look around at my family and scrutinize their faces to see who might be lying. I bite delicately at my tuna sandwich. It smells good, but I definitely don’t want to throw it up later. Regurgitated fish. I think of penguins.

“You’re sure? That she went?” Marlon asks.

“That’s what the cops tell me. Thought I’d poke around and look for the bills here at the house, but God knows why they’d lie about it.” I shrug. I wonder if there’s any way to prove that Zelda actually went to Paris, and I realize that if she did, there would be a stamp in her passport. P for passport? I almost leap up from the table to go look for it, grabbing my plate and the bottle of gin as I head inside.

“Are you finished, Ava?” Opal says disapprovingly, as though she’s expecting me to ask if I may be excused. As though I’m still a little girl.

“Yes, thanks,” I call back. “Very yummy.” I leave my food on the counter, putting a paper towel over it—I might finish it later. Then I head upstairs to Zelda’s room.

It’s nearly impossible to walk across her floor without stepping on anything, so I kick aside old pairs of boots, heaps of clothes, a bottle or two. I tug open the top drawer of an antique dresser and look with alarm at the stacks of papers nestled inside. The contact paper lining the drawer is peeling, and I resist the overwhelming impulse to pick at it. After rifling through the papers for a few minutes, I find what I’m looking for. Zelda titled the contents of this drawer “Important Documents, Official Affidavits, and Papers of Various Interest.” Report cards, love notes, parking tickets, business cards from restaurants, receipts of memorable activities—everything went into this drawer, a scrapbook of Zelda’s comings and goings.

And her passport, tucked down a few layers, amid a handful of receipts. I recognize a card from a restaurant Nico and I sometimes go to, near my apartment. Flipping open her passport, I quickly locate the stamp from Charles de Gaulle Airport, neat and stark and dated from exactly three months ago. The passport is nearly blank, except for a stamp from a Canadian border crossing years ago. We had both gotten passports with the vague intention of going on a road trip to Mexico; we wanted to drive out and visit our father, then head down to Tijuana, get into trouble, learn the way of the Yaqui, buy drugs, bake like lizards in the sun. The whole thing had been Zelda’s idea, of course, and when one of my friends invited me along on a trip to Nantucket instead, I immediately bailed on my sister. The idea of traveling around Mexico with Zelda terrified me. In a huff, Zelda convinced someone to drive her to Toronto for the weekend. She hadn’t wanted the passport to go to waste.

I stare at the stamp for a few moments, confirmation that Zelda came looking for me very recently. For a truce? To convince me to come home? Did my sister want forgiveness or a new start? It feels eerie to think of her lurking on my street, steps away, and me not sensing a thing, maybe even passing her in the Metro. Maybe she watched me come and go, waiting for a good moment to intercept me. But if she traveled to Paris just to speak with me, she chickened out. Remained a silent ghost, lingering on the edges. Fucking hell.

I toss the passport back into the mess of documents and start sifting through the papers in hopes of finding some clue about her motivation. God knows she couldn’t afford to take a holiday; she must have had a real reason. I find a receipt for the hotel she stayed in and a pile of Metro tickets, but I am still looking when the house phone rings.

I jump, startled. I didn’t realize we still had a landline. It’s an unfamiliar noise, and my heart is beating quickly as I dash down the hall to answer it. Does the phone still live downstairs? I hear Opal’s voice, authoritatively answering questions, and I’m inexplicably annoyed. This isn’t her house.

“What is it?” I holler down the stairs.

“Your mother is late for her doctor’s appointment, apparently,” Opal hollers back. “It started fifteen minutes ago.”

“Shit.” It’s her GP appointment, I’m pretty sure. I noticed it on the calendar in Zelda’s phone but promptly forgot. “I’ll take her. Just give me a minute to get dressed.”

“Are you sure?” Opal calls. “Marlon could do it!” I imagine his expression at her offering his services and grin. I’m almost tempted to make him take her.

“No, no! I’ll do it! I want to run some errands!” On impulse, I take another outfit from Zelda’s pile: colorful harem pants and a backless tank top. Dashing down the stairs, I pile my hair on top of my head, knotting it loosely, and grab the keys. “Mom, we’re late. We’ve got to take you to the doctor’s office.”