A Song to Take the World Apart (10 page)

The idea that there might be something to Petra's curse after all is too exhausting to take seriously. That night Lorelei looks at herself in the bathroom mirror. She wishes Zoe was here to make her over with the mask she wore at the Roxy: the face of someone older and prettier, just someone
else.
She hums tunelessly while she brushes her teeth.

“I'm cursed,” she whispers at her reflection, but the lights in the fixture overhead burn on merrily, unblinking, and her mouth tastes of mint and she feels nothing more than tired and sad, achy, like usual. “I'm cursed,” she insists to herself, tracing the lines of her face on the mirror's cold glass.

She looks just like she always does. She shouldn't be surprised. She's always had Oma's curse in her, or whatever it is, just like she's always had her mother's fury and her father's absence. If Petra was cursed before Lorelei was born, she's never lived without it.

I'm the same as I always was,
Lorelei thinks, and flicks off the light on her way out.

I
N THE MORNING,
before she's awake enough to think better of it, Lorelei picks up the oldest letter. She types the words into a Google translate box, one sentence at a time. She has to find keyboard shortcuts for unfamliar characters. It seems to take forever.
Ich würde gerne fragen, wie es dir geht, aber ich bin mir nicht sicher, ob das eine Frage ist, die du jetzt beantworten wolltest.
I would like to ask how you're doing, but I'm not sure if that is a question that you wanted to answer now.
Ich weiss, dass die letzte Zeit schwierig war.
I know that the last time was difficult.
Jetzt, da du da bist, muss ich einfach daran glauben, dass alles wieder gut wird.
Now that you're there, I just have to believe that everything will be fine again.
Ich bin wenigstens froh darüber, dass du gehen konntest, weil du es wolltest.
I'm at least glad that you could go, since you wanted to.

It was Henry's side of the family who arranged the actual emigration; they were government people and diplomats going back generations. He grew up traveling, learning languages in first one city, and then another, and then another. He was the one who chose Los Angeles for them; at least, that's the way Lorelei has always heard the story.
Your mom knew she was going to have two babies, and she wanted to raise them somewhere warm and sunny, where they could play outside all day. I told her: I know just the place.

That story left a thousand details unspoken. Some of them Lorelei has filled in over time: that Henry had always loved Los Angeles, but also that they were running from something they were too ashamed to discuss in their native language when they came here. Then there are the things she's only learning now: that the pregnancy might not have been the only source of worry, or shame. That her grandmother might have done something she was ashamed of too.

The letter is not a revelation. It's chatty and full of news of people whose names she doesn't recognize, domestic details from homes she's never seen. Halfway through she gets bored with the laborious process of typing and reading, and trying to piece together what the computer can't translate or conjugate. It all feels broken and impossible, like a nest of words so tangled that she can't find the first thread to pull.

She takes sentences at random from the letter, and then from the next and the next one.
Today, we found some of your old school papers. Should we forward them to you, or throw away? When it rained the other day, I wanted to make the chicken soup from your recipe, but we didn't have any garlic and it seemed impossible for me to go out in the rain. Of course I miss you all. I miss Petra's singing in the house.

Lorelei has to read it again.
I miss Petra's singing in the house.

Of course she must have sung, to know there was a curse on her, or—whatever it is. Lorelei just can't imagine Petra singing, is all. She tries to picture her mother young and happy and carefree, sitting in her mother's home, surrounded by their family, humming while they talked and washed dishes or made tea. What she comes up with is like a holiday commercial; it has nothing to do with the mother she knows.

She can't imagine her mother happy, or the days when her parents were just starting to fall in love.

Lorelei types in the next sentence, and the next.
I know you won't want me to say it, Silke, but I think there has to be another way for her, and for you.

Her hands are shaking now.

You treat it like a curse, and so she will too.

You've probably stopped reading this letter already, or if you haven't, I will get some blistering reply. It will come all the way across the ocean and still it will burn me when I open it. There's so much space between us, now, and you probably still don't think it's enough.

I'm sorry to make you angry, and remind you of the things you don't like to think about. But if I don't, who will?

Love always,

Your sister

Lorelei smooths the paper in front of her. She was hoping that Hannah's letter would explain it all away, and give this thing a name that was normal rather than magical. But instead it's the final click of a lock coming closed.
You treat it like a curse.
Whatever
it
is, Hannah knew about it. They both did. The blank faces of all those people on the Pier flash in front of Lorelei, and she shivers.

On the other hand, if Oma only
treats
it like a curse, that means it isn't one.
There has to be another way,
Hannah says in the letter. Yesterday Lorelei sang from the bottom of her own grief, but maybe if she was feeling different—if she
was
different—she could give people happiness instead, or wonder, or love. Maybe she could use the obscure power she holds in her throat for something beautiful.

She shivers again, and this time it feels heady and lovely, like something she wants to feel again.

Z
OE COMES TO VISIT
that afternoon, and brings all the normalcy of the real world rushing back in with her. She also brings a satchel of missed homework from the teachers and a card signed by their friends. “Chris asked about you on Friday,” she says, huddling up with Lorelei on her bed.

“Oh!” Lorelei is thrilled, and then upset with herself for being thrilled.

“I told him,” Zoe says. “I hope that's okay.”

Lorelei nods. She's glad to have been spared the awkwardness. It's a big thing to say, and she's already learned that no one really knows how to respond.

Zoe doesn't say anything for a while. She strokes Lorelei's hair at her temples, soothing and sweet.

There's a particular quality to the quiet between them, something different from the oppressive silence that usually fills the rest of the house. They could be talking. Zoe could be trying to fill up space with words and Lorelei would let her. Instead, they both allow the absence. They choose it together.

When Lorelei starts to cry, it happens in her chest, like something ripping open, sobs tearing through her over and over. Zoe holds on to her, an anchor so steady Lorelei can finally let herself drift. She cries until she's ready to be quiet again.

“I don't know what I'm going to do,” she says at last. What she means is:
I don't know what my family is going to do.
She's been so busy thinking about singing, and the letters, and the idea of big, powerful mysteries, that she hasn't let herself look too closely at the truth: every day from now on, she'll wake up and Oma will still be gone. Who will run the house in her absence?

“Oma took good care of you,” Zoe says. “She always— She kind of raised you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“When my mom's mother died, she totally lost it,” Zoe says.

Lorelei can't imagine it. Zoe's mother seems so assured and controlled.

“She didn't get out of bed for a week. And at the gravesite—I mean, she
screamed.
She and her mother had such a complicated relationship, though. I think she didn't know how to mourn her, really. Because they fought so much when she was alive.”

“It's not like that with Oma.”

Or is it? Lorelei doesn't even know how to feel about her grandmother right now.

“Of course it isn't. I just— If it was like that for her, when it had been so complicated, I can't imagine what it's like for you, if, you know, it wasn't. I remember Dad telling Carina that it's okay if grief is ugly. That you just have to get through it, however you need to.”

Oma's absence is like a huge, aching hollow: it's not ugly, it's gutting. Lorelei has a new dress in her closet and she messed up Oma's braid and she made all of those people cry. She took the letters and no one stopped her. There's no fixing it now. There is no going back.

What's ugly is how she feels about the living: Petra's bright eyes, and her mistrust, and the way she's made Lorelei start to ask questions that Oma can never answer.

It shouldn't be this hard,
Lorelei tells herself. To Zoe, she says: “I feel like an orphan. Which is crazy, because—”

“Oma raised you,” Zoe says again. “And anyway, I'm pretty sure that you're allowed to feel whatever the fuck you want.”

It's dark out by the time they go downstairs to say goodbye.

“See you at school tomorrow?” Zoe asks.

“Yeah,” Lorelei says. She unlocks the door and pushes it open. Chris is standing on the front porch.

His hands are stuffed in his pockets and his shaggy head is hung low in the dim yellow light. He's half turned away, as if he lost his nerve at the last minute, or thought better of coming in the first place.

He looks up at them and says, “Oh.”

Should she let him leave? Lorelei gives him a tiny wave. “Hey.”

Zoe says, “Hey,” and she and Chris nod at each other. “I was just going, but I'm glad you came.”

It feels good to know she has Zoe's blessing: that Zoe trusts her, and thinks she's doing okay at this, with him. Lorelei watches her friend skip down the steps to where her mother's car is idling quietly at the curb. Then it's just her and Chris on the porch, hemmed in by the darkness all around them.

“I wanted—” he says, and stops. The smile he gives her is happy but puzzled, strained at the corners. “I really wanted to see you. I wasn't sure if you wanted me to come.”

“It seemed weird to ask,” Lorelei says. “We don't really, um, we don't know each other that well.”

Chris doesn't say anything. His hands are still in his pockets. His body inclines toward hers but he doesn't touch her. It's like he's deliberately holding himself back, but she can't imagine why. Isn't he older? Shouldn't he be sure?

She steps in a little closer and marvels when he does the same.

“I didn't want to see people, sometimes,” Chris says. “After my dad.”

“You're not bothering me,” Lorelei says. “I'm glad you're here.”

At this his smile breaks out, wide and white and dazzling, and he reaches at last to loop an arm around her and tug her in close at his side. She noses at the folds of his sweatshirt, inhaling the strange, musky boyscent of him, clean laundry and his sweat, his skin.

“It's actually been kind of boring, being shut up in the house all week,” Lorelei says.

“You want to get out of here?” he asks. “I mean, can you? We could go for a drive or something. If you want.”

Lorelei looks behind her to where the front door is still just slightly ajar. Jens is in the kitchen, starting to get dinner ready. Nik and her parents are still upstairs. She's wearing leggings and a sweater, and there are probably flats kicked off under the dining room table. Her keys are hung over a hook in the front hall. “Yeah,” she says. “Hang on.”

Jens has three different pots on the stove. It doesn't smell half bad, actually, but he looks pretty frazzled when he hears her come in and turns around.

“I might go out for a minute,” she says.

“Yeah, okay.” He stirs a wooden spoon through something thick, and frowns. “You'll be back to eat, though, right?”

“Sure.”

“Tell Zoe I say hey,” Jens says.

Lorelei doesn't correct him. The lie needles at her, small and sharp. She chooses to ignore it.

She slips out the front door again and closes it behind her, feeling the snick of the lock sliding into place all the way down to her bones. Now she's alone with Chris and the whole huge, dark night.

In the car, the city flashes around them, dim, narrow residential streets quickly giving way to Venice Boulevard's wide lanes. Well-lit window displays and the occasional neon sign mark their progress, though Lorelei doesn't think Chris knows where they're headed, exactly.

“Zoe said you and your grandmother were pretty close,” he says eventually.

“Yeah,” Lorelei says. “She lived with us.”

“That must have been nice.”

“I guess.”

“I don't really know my grandparents.” He slips the car three lanes to the left, hanging a turn at the next intersection. The streets get smaller again, quieter. “My mom's parents are both dead, and my dad's are pretty far away.”

“I guess that's tough for you guys,” Lorelei ventures. “Being just, you know. The two of you.”

“It's hard on her,” Chris agrees.

“Is that why she comes to your shows?”

Chris heaves a long sigh instead of answering. He navigates a few more turns, purposefully, now, like he has some sense of where he's going.

“Sorry,” Lorelei says. “You don't have to tell me.”

Chris pulls over to the curb and turns off the car. He runs his hands through his hair and fiddles the keys out of the ignition. Lorelei tries to be patient. Inside the car it's quiet and warm, and—intimate, she thinks. That's the word. She's surrounded by the stuff of Chris's life: crumpled essays, fragments of gum wrappers, loose change and empty Starbucks cups and stray guitar picks. Her own life seems distant and abstract in comparison.

“It's weird, right?” Chris says. “That she comes.”

“I don't know. I guess everyone's family seems weird to people who aren't in it.”

“She and my dad used to come together,” Chris says. “When I was playing in orchestra, in middle school. When he was good. I mean, they had to drive me, so obviously they came, but—my dad was a musician, have I told you that?”

Lorelei shakes her head. Chris keeps talking. “She was never much for it, but he was so excited that I played. So when she comes now—I don't know, everyone hates it, everyone in the band thinks it's so lame, and I do too, but—” He turns to her and splays his hands, helpless. “She's my
mom,
” he says. “What am I supposed to do?”

It's a question without an answer. There are no rules, Lorelei knows now, about how love works, or how family makes you feel. Everyone knows what they're supposed to feel, of course, but what if you don't? There isn't a law against it. There's only the black fact of your own heart.

“At least you love her,” she says finally. “I don't think that's a bad thing. Right?”

Chris's hand hovers for a moment before it slips across the gearshift, landing lightly against the outside of her thigh, the bony ridge of her kneecap. “I'm crazy about you,” he says. “That's— Is that a bad thing?”

“Why would I think it was?”

“I don't know.” Chris gets bolder. He keeps the hand on her thigh and slides his other one up to her shoulder, brushing against her throat. The network of veins there pulses keenly at his touch. “I barely know you.” His fingertips find the hollow where skull meets neck and slide up, into the tangle of her hair. “You might want me to play hard to get.”

“I don't want anything to be difficult,” Lorelei says. “More difficult than it has to be, anyway.”