Dead Letters(95)

I prowl up and down the beach, thinking of the lazy days we spent down here. I kick at the rowboat, which lolls on its side. This, too, has seen better days; it now looks fragile and unseaworthy. I’m tempted to hop in it and row to Watkins Glen, but my arms cringe at the thought. It would sink before I got anywhere. I notice that the boards look chewed on. Termites, I imagine. I give the rowboat a parting kick and head uphill, back to the house, which looms oppressively above me. I can just barely see my parents and grandmother on the balcony from here.

The walk uphill is harder than my headlong rush down it, and I’m panting and sweaty by the time I make it to the lawn. The chill of the lake water is gone, and I feel flushed and damp. I flop down onto the lawn in exhaustion, burying my nose in the grass. The scent of smoke seems to have settled on the soft blades. Beneath it, I can smell the ground, the soil that has been my family’s livelihood. It doesn’t seem to have registered the recent conflagration anywhere in its aromatic makeup.

“Ava!” Marlon calls from the deck. “C’mon up here!” He sounds just like he did when we were little: confident authority tinged with the promise of more fun. Do as I tell you, and we’re going to have a ball!

I curl up on the grass and don’t look at him. I want to stay here, on the lawn, until it gets dark, until dew turns everything damp and cold. I have a sudden memory of throwing up on this lawn, in right about this spot, after Zelda and I graduated high school. I wonder if my J?ger-soaked vomit fueled an army of drunken worms, which burrowed beneath the opaque lawn and secreted this exact handful of pasteurized soil. I’m part of this lawn! I think giddily. The lining of my stomach is here in this leaf of grass. It is a nice thought. I am comforted. I sit up groggily, my wet hair clinging to my back.

Stumbling inside, I notice that I am famished. The long swim in the cold water has awakened a terrifying hunger; it is not the gently gnawing peckishness of lunchtime but something frantic. I lurch to the fridge and fall upon some potato salad. Opal mainly makes “salads.” She is a mayonnaise-based cook. Tuna salad, pasta salad, potato salad, egg salad. I know that in her fridge at home, there is a bulk-sized jar of Hellmann’s that will never have the opportunity to go bad. The mayonnaise in our fridge was always tinged with blue mold; Nadine refused to use it on anything, because it was “pure calories.” I never really questioned this assessment, though I should have wondered what separated it from other foods.

After having inhaled several cups of gloppy, pale potato salad, I head back upstairs. I feel like a teenager as I pretend not to hear any supplications for me to join the party on the balcony; I stubbornly put my head down and let my hair swing in front of my face as I storm for my bedroom.

Instinctively, once I’m in my room, I check the phones. Nothing. Something is niggling at me, something I forgot to do. I grope for the memory, but it’s just out of reach. Like that feeling you get when you’re leaving on a long trip and you know that you’ve forgotten something important—of course, you don’t remember what it is until you’ve already traveled too far to turn around and go back for it. After we talked to Kyle…I wanted to go look for…But my mind is empty. I can’t remember. We’re up to W. Or, rather, V. V wasn’t Victoires. I text Wyatt, wondering if he’ll remember.


We were going to go check something, after we talked to Kyle. But we got the phone call and ended up at yours etc. and it didn’t happen. What were we going to do?



I strip off my bathing suit as I wait for a response, reaching over to hang it on the hooks I installed when I was thirteen. One set on the back of my door, for towels, and one near the closet, for my bathrobe. I was very precise about never swapping their function. I liked everything to go where it belonged. I pause momentarily, wondering which hook my bathing suit should go on: Is it more towel or more bathrobe? Then I remember my sarong, which complicates things further. It’s a garment, sure, but it’s shaped like a towel….I hang it on a towel hook, my bathing suit on the bathrobe hook. Then I realize what a preposterous amount of time I’ve spent on that gripping internal debate and toss them both onto the floor, as Zelda would. But I almost immediately pick them back up and rehang them, this time on the opposite hooks. I feel better.


Her medications? You wanted to see if she’d been prescribed anything.



Ah, yes. I wanted to see if Zelda was really sick or if she was just flipping out over nothing. I suppose the best place to start would be the trailer. I wish I’d looked more thoroughly when I was hunting for her stash. But I gave up after finding the Valium and heroin. I know there will be more.

Clothed in a lightweight shift dress and sandals, I scuttle out of the house again. The day is heating up, and I consider taking the truck to Zelda’s trailer, but that seems absurd, so I walk, dust coating my feet and ankles. My hair is drying into a strange frizzy creature with a life of its own. The door of the trailer sticks briefly, and I nudge it open with my shoulder. Heat gusts out. It is stuffy inside and smells overly ripe, stale. I open a few windows and light a stick of incense before settling onto Zelda’s bed and hunting through her usual hiding places, the dark crannies of her home.

Thirty minutes later, I’m left with a few wads of cash and a dildo but no more drugs. I’m baffled. Zelda typically hoarded a pharmacy: uppers, downers, hallucinogens. So far, I’ve not even been able to find a joint squirreled away in any of her usual spots. Something niggles at me, something I’ve ignored or overlooked. Would she have hidden something in her bedroom? I doubt it—there aren’t enough hollow places, not enough surfaces to be pulled back in order to reveal what’s underneath.