Love Letters to the Dead(13)

Tristan said, “What? It’s part of her education, right, babe?”

Kristen hit him on the shoulder and said, “Let’s keep it musical.”

Tristan looked at me and shrugged and said, “Sorry, Buttercup. Can’t cross the missus.”

But I think that I might have gotten kind of high from them smoking it in the car, anyway. Because the way you and Kristen sang “Summertime,” it felt like I was so far inside of the song. There was nothing else around. You made me feel what summertime really is. Underneath what’s bright, you knew the hot dark rasp of it. The other thing is, it was like a goodbye, and I could feel that, too. It’s fall now. September’s nearly over.

And then what happened is this. I asked them, trying to sound real casual about it, if they knew Sky. Since I ran into him in the hallway that day, I’ve been hoping for it to happen again, but it hasn’t yet. He did wave to me at lunch the other day, when he caught me looking at him. I thought Kristen and Tristan might know something about him. I tried to sound like I was asking for no reason. But of course my cheeks burned and a giggle burst out of me, and they guessed immediately. Tristan started sing-songing, “Buttercup’s in love!”

Kristen told me that the rumor is Sky transferred because he got kicked out of his old school. She said that he doesn’t talk to anyone about that stuff, so no one knows for sure what happened. She also said that he stands around with the stoners, as if he was one, except he doesn’t even smoke cigarettes. “But,” she said, “he’s cool, definitely. Capital C. I mean, everyone agrees on that.”

Tristan decided we should drive by his house so I could see it. He looked up Sky’s last name—Sheppard—on Kristen’s phone and found a listing. Kristen said we were being creepy, but Tristan laughed and said it was fun. And secretly, I was really excited to see it. We were out of the high school area, in a neighborhood where the houses are smaller and either adobe or tin-sided. Most of the yards were messy, full of sunflowers whose stems were scrambled together, parts of old cars, or trees that somebody cut at the trunk and never hauled away. But at Sky’s address, everything was perfect. The tin siding on the house looked shinier than the rest, as if someone had polished it. And there were rows and rows of perfect marigolds in the front yard in two long flower beds. A welcome mat and a fall wreath on the door, and two same-sized pumpkins on either side, though they were early for Halloween. I saw there was someone outside. A woman, in her bathrobe, watering the flowers with a bright green watering can. It was two a.m. Just as we were driving away, I saw someone else open the door, and when I turned back, it looked like Sky.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear Judy Garland,

I’m in English right now, not paying attention in class and writing this letter instead, which is sort of ironic because technically this whole thing started as an assignment for English that I never turned in.

After I got off the phone with Mom last night, I went on Google Earth and tried to see if I could find where she is. California was colored in blocky splotches of gray and brown and green, like all the other states. I knew the ranch is close to Los Angeles, but I didn’t know where exactly. I scanned around, hovering above the city, trying to find some context. When I would start to zoom in, the picture plummeted toward the ground, until it would land in a street view of a road leading nowhere in particular.

Finally, instead I typed in the address of where you used to live in the desert town of Lancaster, California. It looked like a normal neighborhood, one that I could imagine walking in. My mom told us how before you were Judy Garland, you were Frances Ethel Gumm, “Baby” they called you, from Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Your family moved to Lancaster when you were four. It was dry and dusty, but after the winter rains, miles of red poppies would spring up everywhere. I found a photo of the Lancaster poppies online, and it made me think of you falling to sleep in the field of them in The Wizard of Oz after the Wicked Witch cast a spell. Mom didn’t ever tell us this part, but I read that your family moved because of rumors that your dad hit on male ushers at this theater in Grand Rapids. Your parents used to fight so much it scared you, but you kept singing. Your mom put all of her energy into trying to make you a star. You traveled on the vaudeville circuit with your two older sisters—first the Gumm Sisters, then the Garland Sisters, and then it was you who got signed by MGM.

My sister was a bit like you were as a little girl. She was the bright spark of the family, the one who everyone relied on to shine, the one who tried to keep everyone from fighting. I think because of Mom’s story about how May brought our family together, she felt like it was her job to keep it that way.

When we’d be at the dinner table, if Mom and Dad were fighting, I would sit there silently, trying not to cry. But May would disappear and come back wearing her leotard. She’d go into the living room, where we could all see her, and she’d start doing back walkovers and pirouettes. The way May was, it was impossible not to look at her. She’d do cartwheels and long leaps, and if they hadn’t stopped fighting yet, she’d do handsprings down the runner of the rug. She’d say, “Look!” and flip right there. We’d clap for May, and when she had finished her show, she’d say, “Can we have ice cream for dessert?” So Mom would get the bowls, and everything bad was gone for the moment.

But once in a while, there were times when Mom was having a “bad night,” and no matter how many handsprings May did, or songs she sang, or jokes she told, she couldn’t make Mom snap out of it. Mom would put her hand on May’s forehead and say, “I’m sorry, honey, but I’m having a bad night.” Mom would say she was too tired for a bedtime story. She’d tuck us in early and disappear into her room. Dad would follow her in and try to calm her down. Sometimes, if it didn’t work, we’d hear him leave the house.