What the Dead Want(4)

“More modesty?” Gretchen suggested, making Simon laugh.

“Maybe just more wrinkle cream,” Simon said. “I think he’s like a million years old. He talked about going to see Iggy Pop play in the 1960s!”

“That’s cool, though,” Gretchen said.

Simon sighed. “I know. I wish we could have seen him back then.” He watched her pack up her makeup. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me here by myself all summer.”

She lay down next to him on the bed, looked into his dark eyes, rested her forehead against his. “I will text you every day.”

“You better,” he said.

Then he got up and helped pick out her “going to the mansion” outfit: gray vintage cotton slip, her Doc Martens, an old rhinestone necklace that had belonged to her mother. She wore bright-red lipstick and put her long hair up into a topknot on her head. He stood back and sighed again. “So, so beautiful,” he said.

Janine went down in the elevator with her to see her off, handed Gretchen a wad of cash as she was getting into the car, and kissed her on the cheek.

“Upstate is pretty weird,” she said. “Take some good pictures.”

“Wait, what do you mean, weird?”

Janine shrugged. “Depressing. Provincial. Creepy. Insular. Ignorant. . . .”

“Okay,” Gretchen said, looking nervous. “I think I got it.”

“There’s a reason eight million people live in New York City and not in the surrounding countryside,” Janine said. Then, “If you feel like coming home—do it.” Then she patted the top of the car and the driver headed out through a jam of rush-hour traffic. Gretchen gazed into the orange light of morning that reflected off the tall buildings surrounding Central Park. How very strange, Gretchen thought. She hadn’t thought about Axton mansion for years, and now she was heading there—about to inherit the place her mother’s family had once called home.

She’d had eight hours sitting in the back of the car to dream of what the mansion might be like, and now here it was: a ghostly relic at the end of a dark forest road. No houses nearby, not a soul in sight. On the porch the scrawny cat stared, an empty chair rocked back and forth from the breeze, and a stiff piece of smudged and ancient newsprint scuttled across the porch and lodged itself in the thorns at the base of the rosebush.



Dear James,

Thank you for sending the NORTH STAR along with your letter. It means everything to me! I have hidden it beneath my mattress for fear Father discovers it. There is such anxiety over these topics. My parents have always found it best to keep their heads down—I’m sure you know why. But as for myself I hope you will tell me of any opportunity that might arise for me to help. I only wish that I had been able to be there and see Mr. Douglass speak myself. Maybe one day people will understand that no matter the plight, it’s the very same people holding everybody down.

I think about his life and journey and, like you, am inspired. Were that I not forced to stay in my father’s home and care for my nieces, I would be at school, like you, or maybe even helping in the cause. Just to be surrounded by those who can speak so bravely about freedom, and fight for it.

I share all your sentiments, James, even the ones we shouldn’t be so careless to speak about in letters. Would that you were here and we could talk more plainly face-to-face. I think about the day you left for school, and the things we said. It’s all true, James. I have never had a better friend. And my feelings grow ever stronger in your absence.

Life at home in Mayville is as you would imagine. Pretty and airy and oh-so dull. I ran into your brother George while picking berries with my nieces. He was out hunting with some friends and seemed well and red cheeked and jovial. George is charming and well liked, isn’t he? Splendidly suited to take over the Axton family business, and always dressed in the finest cotton.

Sincerely yours,

Fidelia





TWO


GRETCHEN SNAPPED HER FIRST PICTURE STANDING IN front of the house. She was not a person to take dozens of photographs a day of frivolous things. Of all her friends, she was proud of never having taken a selfie. She used a real camera, not her phone, and she chose her subjects carefully.

Never in her life had she seen anything as remote or abandoned as this place. And yet it was somehow vibrant. The sun shone through the pine trees onto the gray boards of the porch and spilled over the roof and the cupola, glinted off the weather vane; the air was wild with dust motes and pollen and speck-size insects. There were billions of shining particles in the stillness, circulating madly. Birds were chirping. The whole place was teeming with nearly invisible life.

She stepped back away from the porch and took a shot of the house surrounded by light and insects—then a picture of the black car pulled up in the looping drive, to capture the strange juxtaposition of country dilapidation and city wealth.

“Oh, Simon,” she said under her breath, “you would love it here.” Simon had always said of writing poetry that he didn’t know how people who didn’t write could stand it—and, by “it,” he didn’t mean “not writing,” he meant being alive.

“I mean, if you’re not a writer, you could be walking down the street one day, and a brick could fall on your head,” he said. “And then you’re just, you know, some guy who had a brick fall on his head, and it totally sucks. But if you’re a poet and one day you’re walking down the street and a brick falls on your head, if it doesn’t kill you, you’ve got material. Whatever bad shit happens to you, you can use it in your writing.”