Love Letters to the Dead(43)

So today when I woke up early, I went in my pajamas and started unscrewing the base, and by the time Dad walked out I had the whole tree over my shoulder, and it was raining its needles all over the cream carpet as I carried it to the door.

Dad asked, “What are you doing?”

“Taking down the tree.”

“Here, let me help.”

“No,” I snapped, without meaning to. “I can do it myself.”

When I got outside, I didn’t know what to do with it. So I went to the toolshed and looked around until I found a saw. I laid the tree down on the cement and started tearing through its trunk, until it was in jagged pieces. The smell of pine was overwhelming, like the tree’s heart was leaking out. I piled the series of sawed-off limbs next to the trash.

When I went inside, Dad was vacuuming up the last of the needles on the floor. The sound covered my stomach’s growl as I walked past him and into the kitchen to pour some Rice Krispies.

Dad came in and poured himself a bowl. He was wearing his work clothes, ready to go. “What do you have on the docket for your last day of vacation?” he asked, looking at me expectantly.

“Oh, just a little TV in my pajamas,” I said, giving him a weak smile. I don’t have to go back to school until tomorrow, thanks to teacher planning day.

“Where’s that boyfriend of yours?” Dad asked. “You think you might want to bring him around in daylight hours one of these days?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, my heart plunging into my stomach. I didn’t want to tell Dad the truth, that Sky hadn’t called me back in five days.

And then, as I picked up my spoon to try to force down some cereal, I saw it. One of the little plastic spiders I’d given Dad for Christmas, floating in my bowl. He must have snuck it into the cereal box. I did my best to laugh, and then I looked up at him. He was smiling so hopefully. “Gotcha,” he said, before he left for work.

When he was gone, I put on In Utero and lay down and listened to “Heart-Shaped Box”—it must have been a thousand times—and felt sick. I thought about dialing Sky’s number again, just to hear it ring. I’ve called over and over since New Year’s, and when the voice mail picks up—not even Sky’s own voice, but the generic woman’s that comes with the phone—I hang up. I haven’t left a message. I don’t know what to say.

Earlier tonight when I was trying to fall asleep, I kept thinking of the tree going in the trash, and it just wasn’t right. I couldn’t stand it being there like that. So I snuck out, and I carried the limbs, two by two or three by three, all the way through the dark neighborhood where I would walk with Sky and back behind the golf course to the ditch, and I tossed them into the water so they might get to go to the river and then, who knows, maybe to the ocean. They could become driftwood on a beach in California.

I am back in bed now, but I still can’t sleep. My hands have splinters. They smell like something stolen from the forest. I keep thinking about the day that May’s wings broke.

We were fairies, and when we were together, the magic worked and I believed in it. Every time the shadows in our room seemed to come alive, I could wake May up, and we would sneak out into the yard with new lists of ingredients for a spell. They changed with the season. Six red berries. Seven yellow leaves. A drop of honey from the honeysuckle. A hard-searched-out feather. A melted icicle. We cast spells to keep the shadow people at bay, spells to preserve the fairy gene, spells to defeat the evil witches. When I found an injured bird one day, we cast a spell to help her heal, and sure enough, when I went back to her box the next day, she was gone. She’d flown away.

But there was this part of the fairy world that I could never share with May; I couldn’t fly. I knew the rules. Only the oldest child had wings. But I kept thinking maybe there could be some exception. It was all I wanted. When Aunt Amy would take us to church, that’s what I’d pray for. When May pulled an eyelash off my cheek, I’d squint my eyes shut and wish for wings with all my might.

But when they didn’t come, I thought that if only I could see May fly, that would be the next best thing. If I saw her soaring into the sky, I would for sure be part of the magic. I would look at her naked back when we’d lie on the bed after a bath and Mom rubbed cold lotion on us. I would see her shoulder blades jutting out and imagine how she could unzip her smooth skin to reveal these transparent, magnificent, shimmering wings.

I would beg and beg to see. Just the tip of a wing. Just for a minute. But she always said she couldn’t show me. I kept begging, and one day, I must have been about seven by then, I begged so hard that I started to cry. So finally she told me that she would fly to the top of the elm tree in our yard, and after she flew up there, I could come out and see her.

“But you can’t look until I tell you. Until I’ve landed. Do you promise?”

I promised. I meant to keep the promise, too. I really meant to. But as I stood by the back door, waiting for her to call me, something so strong pulled at me. I thought maybe if I saw by accident, it wouldn’t count. So I cracked the screen door and peeped out. And I let my eyes flash toward the tree, just for a second, just in time to see her falling from high up. She was screaming, “You broke them! You broke them!”

I ran over and started sobbing. “But I didn’t even see. I didn’t even see. I didn’t look!”