Love Letters to the Dead(18)

“Does that mean yeah you’ll go with me or yeah you got it?”

After what Hannah and Kristen said, I figured my chances of Sky asking were pretty much none, especially since there’s only a week and a half left before the dance. And it seemed hard to say no to Evan and his paper heart. So I said, “Oh. Uh. Yeah, I’ll go.” Then I added, “But I kind of have plans beforehand. So, can we meet there?”

I’ve seen plenty of versions of homecoming dates on TV—the girls in their satin dresses cutting tiny pieces off of rib eyes they won’t finish at somewhere like Outback Steakhouse, drinking Shirley Temples and virgin pi?a coladas, while the guys scarf their whole plates and then tackle the girls’. And I know that Evan probably has popular friends who do this kind of thing. But what would I say to them?

Honestly, I don’t want him to pick me up, because I couldn’t stand him coming to our quiet house. I don’t want him to see inside it. And I don’t want Dad feeling like he should have to pretend and pull out the camera. We don’t take pictures anymore.

Evan was still looking at me.

I tried to give him a way out. “You know, if you want to ask someone else who can go to dinner first, I totally get it. It’s totally okay.”

Evan just said, “No, it’s cool. You can come out after, right?”

I guess this was the part that really mattered. If he thought we would make out or not.

“Yeah, sure,” I mumbled.

So now, this is going to be my first dance. With Evan Friedman and his jagged red heart. It was supposed to be Sky.

At May’s first dance her freshman year, I watched her get ready in her red dress, not satin, but silk. She was so perfectly alive. Her date, Justin Alvarez, a senior boy, rang the doorbell like he should and pinned on a corsage. I stayed hidden in the door frame, watching. Even though they’d already split up by then, Mom and Dad both wanted to be the ones to see her off to her first dance, so Mom came over that night. She took pictures of May being beautiful. Dad shook Justin’s hand and said, “Be home by twelve.” I had this feeling that the boy dressed in a suit was carrying her away, into her new life that I couldn’t see. I wished I could go.

When she got back that night at two a.m., she tiptoed into her room. She’d called Dad and told him what a great time she was having and begged for a couple extra hours. He’d finally agreed and gone to sleep, but I had been in bed waiting up, my eyes open to the moonlight. I heard her and pushed open her door. She said, “You have to hear this.” She put on a CD and played “The Lady in Red.” Over and over and over. I lay on her bed and watched her unpin her hair, placing freed bobby pins on the dresser, and wiping off the lipstick. When her curls were a mess over her shoulders, she lay in the bed next to me, starting the song over again and closing her eyes. She fell asleep in her red dress. I saw the hem of it with its sequins crumple between her thigh and the sheet. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I wondered if anyone could ever think that about me.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear Allan “Rocky” Lane,

I wanted to know who you were, besides the voice of Mister Ed, so I looked you up online. I found a picture of you, and I was surprised to see you were really very handsome. A Western man. Rough and kind at once. Up until then, I had only seen the face of Mister Ed when I pictured you in my mind. But I discovered you were a boy who grew up in Indiana and left school because you dreamed of becoming a Hollywood star. Before you were Mister Ed, you were Harry Leonard Albershart from Indiana, and then Allan Lane the actor, nicknamed Rocky. The article said you made thirty B Westerns—the low-budget kind—riding a horse called Black Jack through movie sets. It’s strange the way even dreams turn into jobs.

When you were on set shooting all of those B movies with titles like Desperadoes’ Outpost and Frontier Investigator, I wonder if in your head you were riding a real horse across the desert, galloping off to somewhere else. It might not be what you’d imagined when you wanted to become a star, but when you were Mister Ed, you galloped yourself into the living rooms of so many people who loved you. I know that.

Aunt Amy has watched your show since she and Mom were kids. I think it reminds her of when the world seemed safe. The way you make us laugh, it’s clean—a talking horse goes to a dentist, makes phone calls to movie stars, watches too much TV. Nothing really bad ever happens.

I wish that Aunt Amy could meet somebody like you. Someone who could make her laugh and look good in his cowboy hat as he tipped it toward her. If you were here, you could do your Mister Ed voice and make her crack up. Instead, Aunt Amy just has the Jesus Man, who never calls back.

When I see her putting on her apron in the morning to go to work, I can see the days stretch ahead of her like a desert. Even if it didn’t come perfectly true, you got to live close to your dream. But she works at the Casa Grande diner, where people go for lunch, people who seem like they wish they were meant to go to lunch somewhere else. The cooks put too much chicken salad on the sandwiches. A huge ice cream scoop of it, over a slippery tomato. They don’t bother spreading it out. And the whole thing slides off.

Last weekend, she asked me to come and visit her there. It was near the end of her shift, and I was one of only four tables. Across the room, there was a man wearing a tee shirt that said ABSTINENCE: 99.9% EFFECTIVE, with a picture of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. When his iced tea was empty, he sucked at the crushed ice through a straw. He sucked out all the liquid the ice was willing to give up. When no refill came, he snapped his fingers. Aunt Amy probably didn’t like him on account of his shirt, and she walked over without her iced tea pitcher and told him that was rude. They got in an argument, and the manager ended up giving him his glass of tea for free. Another table sitting next to me sent back their fries because they were too crispy. I watched Aunt Amy behind the counter. She sneezed into her hand, and then when she thought no one was looking, she subtly touched the new plate of fries. It surprised me that someone who believes in Jesus would do this. But it’s a hard job.