Love Letters to the Dead(38)

When we pulled up outside my house, I asked, “Do you think I’m too messed up?”

“For what?” Sky replied.

“For you.”

“No.”

He said it so plainly that a flood of relief rushed into me. All I wanted was to lose myself in his body. I crawled onto him across the seat and felt his hands on me. I don’t mean we had sex, but we got closer than we have yet. As the neighborhood Christmas lights on their timers started to shut off, one by one the houses went quiet. The windows in the truck turned foggy, with patterns like icy feathers cracking across them. I let him keep me warm, and I promised myself I would be brave this time.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear Judy Garland,

Today is the second day of break, and tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Luckily I got permission from Aunt Amy to stay with Dad the whole vacation. I know how much she’ll be all about Christ’s birth and salvation and stuff this time of year, and I’m not really up for it at the moment. It’s depressing at Dad’s, but the ghosts in the house are ours, and I just want to be with them. Even though Aunt Amy and Dad are not exactly best friends, Aunt Amy will still come over on Christmas, because I don’t want her to be alone. I got her a super fancy advent calendar that you can use every year, all with Jesus-type pictures in it. Dad was harder, but I got him a basket of joke things to remind him of how he used to like that kind of stuff—whoopee cushions and plastic spiders and chewing gum that turns your mouth blue.

I watched Meet Me in St. Louis twice already this morning. I cried both times when you sang “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” with your voice full of longing. I wonder if when you had to sing the song for the movie you were remembering how Christmas was when you were little, singing “Jingle Bells” on the stage in your daddy’s theater. He died when you were only thirteen, just after you signed with MGM. He was so proud of you, driving you to the studio every morning, walking you into its one-room schoolhouse. While he was dying in the hospital, you were on the radio, singing to him. You never got to say goodbye. This will be my first Christmas without May.

After the credits rolled for the second time, I figured that at some point I should get out of my pajamas. Since Dad’s been too depressed, I think, to do anything Christmassy so far, I decided to try to cheer him up. I pulled the Christmas box out of the attic, and then I pulled Dad’s ladder out of the shed, and I was going to put the lights up outside the house so they could be glowing for Dad when he came home from work.

I was topsy-turvy on the ladder, trying to carry the bundle of lights up to the rooftop, when Mark, the neighbor boy, walked up.

I’ve known him and his twin brother, Carl, since I was born, because our parents would trade us for babysitting. When they were younger, their mom dressed them in different colors of plaid and kept their sandy hair swept across their foreheads. They smelled of chlorine from their pool, where we would all swim every summer, even after we got old enough not to need babysitting anymore. While they called “Marco Polo” or tried to dunk May under, I would tread water and try not to notice Mark in his swimsuit. I knew they were twins and supposed to look the same, but to me, Mark looked like nobody I’d ever seen. He was my first crush. But he and Carl were both in love with May. I was too young for him. Kid, they called me.

Carl and Mark went away to college this year, and I hadn’t seen them since May’s memorial. I remember them both dressed in suits, standing around our house with their parents. I kept staring, because for the first time I couldn’t tell them apart.

But now, I knew it was Mark. He called up, “Hey! Do you need some help?”

I climbed off the ladder. I could see his house down the street, where his parents were out with Carl, putting the final touches on their usual winner-of-the-block decorations, complete with a blow-up Santa Claus. Next to them, our old man neighbor, Mr. Lopez, was fiddling with his glow-in-the-dark manger scene, behind the bars of his wrought iron fence. “Jesus in jail,” May used to joke.

I wondered if I still had a crush on Mark, but I guessed that I didn’t anymore, now that there’s Sky. Still, it was comforting to see him, as if he were proof of a life that used to exist.

When he offered help, I said, “Sure,” laughing. “It’s sorta harder than it looks.”

So together, we strung up the lights, not having to talk about much other than how to get them in place on the hooks and where to run the extension cord.

When we finally climbed down from the roof, it was starting to get dark out.

“So,” I asked, “how’s college?”

“It’s good.” He smiled. “Harder than I thought. But no parents, so that’s nice. You’ll like it.” He looked me up and down. “Crazy,” he said. “You’re all grown-up.”

“Yeah,” I said with a smile. “I guess.”

I was really hoping that he wouldn’t say anything about May and how he was sorry, and, thank goodness, he didn’t. Instead, he said, “How’s your dad?”

“He’s all right. At work.” I gestured to the lights. “I’m going to surprise him with this. Thanks for the help.”

“Well,” he said, “come by if you want some cookies. Mom’s got the oven running twenty-four/seven.”

I nodded, although I knew I wouldn’t.