Dead Letters(86)

There it is. First pseudospiritual Eastern religious mumbo jumbo of the night. I know what’s coming next.

“These are hard lessons, Ava, but they’re part of your solar arc. I looked at your chart and your sister’s, and I’d be really happy to talk to you sometime about what I intuited there. You might find it useful.” She must be stoned, if she’s headed straight for the astrology. Or maybe Zelda talked about it with her.

I nod, trying to indicate my lack of interest. “Yeah, okay, Dora. Thanks.”

“Is your dad around?” Steve asks, too casually, and I frantically try to remember if they had some sort of unpleasant interaction before Marlon split. Does Marlon owe him money? I can’t remember. Seems like he left unpaid debts all over town.

“Yeah, he flew in from California. Brought his mother,” I add, with a bitter sip of beer. It’s raw and hoppy-tasting, but I actually kind of like it. I sense its great potential for getting one tanked.

“Oh, that must be nice. To have some help with Nadine,” Dora says. I nod.

“Listen, guys, it’s been a really long day,” Wyatt says, clearing his throat. “Ava is gonna crash here tonight, if that’s cool. Her house is a bit of a zoo right now.”

“Of course, whatever you need. There’s leftover spaghetti, if you’re hungry,” Dora says.

“And plenty more beer in the fridge. Help yourself,” Steve adds, obliviously earning himself another nervous squint from Dora.

“?’Night, guys,” Wyatt says as they bustle toward the stairs, taking their dismissal very graciously. Steve flips off the sound system on his way out of the room. The Darlings are very serious about energy conservation.

“G’night!” I call, flopping down on the couch with my beer. I try not make eye contact but instead lap the hoppy dregs of beer with my tongue. I pluck the remnants of a joint from the ashtray and light up, not waiting to be invited.

“Ava,” Wyatt begins softly, coming to sit beside me. I can hear that it’s his serious voice, that he’s about to say something Important. I try to look attentive. “I just. I wanted to say. I’m sorry. About the whole—thing—with your sister. I shouldn’t have.”

“She shouldn’t have.”

“It wasn’t—we were both just so angry at you.”

“I know,” I sigh. It’s not that I’m not pissed and hurt about that still. That it didn’t feel catastrophic at the time. It’s more that as it was happening, in almost the same breath that was knocked out of me when I found out about them, I realized that they had given me an escape route that I had subconsciously desired. With that betrayal, I finally had a good reason to go; I could really commit to abandonment. After having done everything I was supposed to do, playing by the rules all these years, I could just walk off. I’d been an overachiever, a plays-well-with-others kid, a high school honor society role model, a star student at an Ivy League college, planning to go into a sensible and necessary vocation; I’d been take-over-the-family-business upright-citizen material my whole life. I’d done what I was told, colored impeccably between the lines. This transgression of Zelda’s and Wyatt’s should have meant I could go be senseless and frivolous. Go read books and faff around Europe and be silly, reckless. But, of course, I didn’t leave immediately. I had transgressions of my own to make.

Their betrayal alone would not have been enough to dislodge me from Silenus.

“It’s what happened afterward, of course,” I say casually. “After I found out about you two.” Wyatt looks at me in alarm. We’ve never spoken about it, obviously. “I think I knew I was going to leave after the first glimpse of you together, Zelda squirming away on top of you, your toes curled in ecstasy.” He flinches. “That was the end. But it was that night a week later that meant I had to leave. Completed the ritual.”

“Look, Ava, we’d all been drinking, we were all upset, it wasn’t…”

“You think so?” I stare at him, my eyes dark and cruel. “We all had our reasons—the whiskey just helped us along. If it hadn’t happened, I never would have had the courage to walk away. Zelda would never have felt like she’d mastered us both. And you…you wanted to have both of us, didn’t you? To not have to choose, for just one night?”

His silence is the answer.

“Is there more to say about it, Ava?” Wyatt finally asks, his voice full of pain and shame. I sip my beer and lock eyes with him. “Should we—do you want to talk about it?”

“No. I really don’t.” I set my beer on the coffee table, put the roach back in the ashtray, and raise myself up onto my knees. I reach around and free my zipper, then tug my dress over my head. I can see the outlines of my body in the reflection of the black window, the glare of my white underthings stark in the dim glass. I lean across his body, stretching my whole self out across the planes of his chest and stomach. I can’t undo what happened before. Either I can never see him again or I can let it go. “Absolutely no more talking. We’re done with that.”





21


Upstairs, I wake in Wyatt’s bed. I’m wearing only my bra and underwear, and, fuzzily, I remember him hoisting me off the couch and carrying me up to bed. I’m grateful not to be on display in the living room, where, after several more beers, I fell asleep tangled up in a scratchy hand-knit blanket and Wyatt’s long arms. Usually, when quaffing flask after decanter after pitcher of jammy, noxious booze, I later weep veritable flagons of remorse. But not today. I yawn and stretch out, flopping over onto my back in this strange bed. We didn’t spend much time here back when we were together, largely due to his parents’ disapproval, as well as to the fact that from the age of about fourteen, my house was a free-for-all. His sheets are clean and smell like they were recently hanging outside on a clothesline, and I inhale the scent of his pillow deeply. I actually feel good. Downstairs, I can hear rustlings and morning conversation, and I imagine the smell of coffee.