Love Letters to the Dead(63)

“Hi, honey.”

“Hi.”

“How are you tonight?”

“Okay, I guess.” I sat down on my bed and pulled the rose quilt around me and stared at the empty, pale pink walls.

“I know it feels like I’m far away, but I want you to know, my heart is with you today.”

I couldn’t swallow it. “That’s nice, Mom, but it doesn’t really make anything easier.”

The other end of the line was quiet, until Mom said, “I’m sorry, Laurel. I just thought … I thought you’d be better off without my grief to deal with. I didn’t know how to be strong for you after May died. I thought it would be worse, your seeing me cry all the time.”

The words fell out of my mouth before I could think about it. “Nothing is worse than when someone who’s supposed to love you just leaves.”

The phone line filled with static that sounded like the ocean, both of us crying in our separate corners of the planet.

“Maybe you think it’s my fault. Maybe that’s why you left,” I finally said.

“Laurel, it’s not your fault. Of course it’s not your fault.”

“Well, maybe it is. I should have never told her…”

“Told her what?”

The room was spinning and spinning now, and I was breathing too fast. “I don’t know. I have to go.”

I let the phone fall to the floor. I couldn’t stop crying. Everything was flooding in, everything too fast. Hannah in her bra at Blake’s, her face-painted bruise, Natalie’s chipped tooth, don’t tell, the door open with them kissing and it’s my fault, I didn’t save them, I couldn’t save them, I couldn’t save her. The soap in the shower that will never get it clean enough and the frog in the back of my drawer, I just left him there, and your poster torn to shreds and the bunk beds taken apart, I just want to climb the ladder and lie by May so it can be okay. Sky walking away, driving away, everyone away, and May rolling away from the car, how it was going to hit her, how she yelled at me when I tried to stop her, the car going too fast down the road, too fast, and now Mark the neighbor boy will never love me, the river flooding my whole head, the guy’s hand reaching toward me, his hand on me, his hand under my shirt, sticky thighs on his seats, but just be like May, be pretty like her, be brave, this is what it’s supposed to be, this is the world now, wake up, his hand on me, how it felt, and the night hot and sticky and sticking to me and your voice I’m not gonna crack—




Dear Kurt,

After the first night at the movies, I would watch Aladdin at home on DVD. I watched it over and over. Whenever I’d remember things I didn’t want to remember, I would put it on so that I could replace Billy with the movie I was supposed to have seen that night, how Aladdin ran around the city, stealing things, saying, “One jump ahead of the slowpokes.” How he and the princess rode on the carpet, singing, “A whole new world…” I would practice being like them, just soaring over everything.

The next time May took me to the movies after the first time, she walked into my room in Mom’s apartment and asked, “Do you want to go to the movies tonight?” with a wink. At Mom’s she could have just gone off by herself. When I used to ask her to take me wherever she was going, she’d say I was too young. But now she wanted me with her. I didn’t know what to say. I felt like if I let her leave without me, I would never get her back. I told myself what happened with Billy wasn’t that bad. I told myself that’s what people do. If I pretended it never happened, I thought maybe it never would have.

So Friday nights became movie nights. It started late that fall after she met Paul and lasted into the spring. We’d go after the Village Inn dinners, with Mom’s or Dad’s ten dollars. When we’d be in the car on the way, May’s lips would get dark as she put her lipstick on. She’d smile and pass it to me and say, “Do you want some?” I’d watch my lips turn dark, too, as I smoothed the crayon-tasting color over my mouth. It was like make-believe. I thought if I stayed close enough to May, the power of her would rub off. So I’d try to use the crimson as an eraser, to take away the feeling of being scared. For both of us. We’d listen to songs and sing loud. I would ignore the sick feeling in my stomach. I would try to be happy. I was with my sister. She liked me, and we were friends again.

And sometimes, May and I really did go to the movies. Sometimes there was no Paul or Billy to ruin everything, and we’d buy Sour Patch Kids and sit in the back of the theater and whisper.

But other nights, when we’d walk up and I’d see Billy standing outside with Paul, my heart would go sick with dread. May and Paul would go off in Paul’s car, and once they were gone, Billy and I would get into his car, parked on the field of blacktop, and he’d drive off somewhere. I got good at it after a while, riding on the carpet above the earth, or riding with the car engines to the ocean.

Billy would start to touch me and say, “I can’t help it. You cast a spell on me.” I wondered if I did cast a spell on him by accident. What if somehow I made him do it, by wishing to be like May, by wishing that she’d take me with her when she used to leave at night?

Sometimes Billy would hang around with me outside of the theater, waiting for May and Paul to come back, so that I wouldn’t look like I was always alone, I guess. When May would ask me if I liked the movie, I would rush past my answer, asking her for stories instead, imagining parties she’d been to with the music so loud that it got into your heartbeat. A lot of times, her breath would smell like alcohol, or her eyes would be glazed over. But she was always smiling, so I thought she was happy. I wanted her to be happy.