Love Letters to the Dead (14 page)

Then Dad got more serious. “Well, the point is, you know what boys your age are after, don’t you? One thing. That’s all they think of, night and day.”

“Dad, it’s not like that.”

“It’s always like that,” he said, only half kidding.

I tried to tell him that he doesn’t know and that boys are different now, different from when he was a boy, but in my heart, I didn’t mind if Sky was thinking about having sex with me.

Finally Dad said, “Laurel, I understand why you haven’t brought your new friends over here. I know that it’s hard, and I know your old man isn’t much to brag about, either, these days. But if you are going to be hanging out with a boy, I’d like to meet him.”

I didn’t want to bring Sky to our house, but it made me sad to hear Dad say that he thought he wasn’t much to brag about, so I said, “All right.”

“And how about those girlfriends you’re always with? They’re not a bunch of rabble-rousers, are they?” He raised his eyebrows, trying to make a joke of it.

“No, Dad.” I tried to laugh. Then I took a deep breath and asked, “When do you think Mom is going to come back?”

He sighed and looked at me. “I don’t know, Laurel.”

“I wish she hadn’t left,” I blurted out.

“I know.” He frowned. “I know there are things you need a woman to talk about. But at least you have your aunt for now.”

“Aunt Amy doesn’t know those things, I don’t think. I think you should tell Mom she should come home.” I looked at him, waiting.

I wondered if he was mad at her still, for moving into that stupid apartment when she did, and then for leaving us again. I saw him start to tip over with pain, and I regretted saying anything. He sighed the kind of sigh that makes you wonder how he ever got that much air into his lungs to let out, and I understood that he couldn’t help Mom being gone any more than I could.

Where Dad grew up, life made sense. His parents still live on their same farm in Iowa where he used to wake up at the crack of dawn to do the chores. He always said he loved the smell of alfalfa in the morning. When he was twenty-one, he rode away on his motorcycle, stopping in different towns and picking up odd jobs, mostly in construction, then moving on when he was ready. He said that he thought that the world might have more in store, and he’d gone out to find it. But mostly he had loved to tell how it all changed the day he met Mom. How he’d met her and understood, suddenly, why loving somebody and building a family could be enough.

I think I might have been starting to show tears without meaning to, because Dad leaned over and gave me a knuckle-rub on the head, which meant the conversation was over. It’s more talking than we ever do these days, anyway.

I remembered then how Dad would sing me and May a lullaby at night, after he’d cleaned himself up from work, and I could smell the spicy cologne still on his cheeks. He’d sing:

“This land is your land, this land is my land

From California, to the New York Island

From the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and me.”

When he’d sing that song, each place was like a mystery that I would one day discover. It made me feel the world was huge and sparkling and full of things to explore. And I belonged in it, with him and Mom and May. And now, Mom is actually all the way in California. And May is nowhere.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear Jim Morrison,

At Fallfest, there is a band that plays your songs. Everyone crowds into a park near the foot of the mountains the weekend right after Thanksgiving. When May and I were kids, we would get excited for it every year. There are tents with crafts, and booths with Indian fry bread and roasted chiles, and booths with ladies selling dried red corn for decoration and pies. But once it gets dark and colder, all anyone wants is the music. Moms and dads and kids and teenagers, too, all head for the stage. Everyone puts on their jackets and dances.

Mom and Dad used to swing dance on the dirt dance floor. They were the best. Everyone would watch them, spinning and lifting. May and I would be on the side, with the Thanksgiving wreaths we made at the craft booth, licking the powdered sugar from the fry bread off our fingers. Mom laughed like a little girl as Dad threw her in the air. It was almost time for the winter to come, but we forgot about our cold toes and our frozen fingers, because we could see what it looked like when they looked like love. We could imagine the story of them, how it was when they met, how it had happened that they made our family. We were proud that they were our parents.

Last year May really wanted to go to Fallfest again, so just the two of us went together. It was the second fall after Mom and Dad had split up. We walked around and ate fry bread, and when the dancing time of night came, we went over to the stage. I stood on the side and watched as May danced with everything in her body, twirling alone in the middle of the floor. It reminded me of when we were kids and how if there was a fight, she’d dance around the living room, using all of the power she had in her to make things better.

But after the first song was over, she said, “Let’s get out of here.”

We were about to leave, and that’s when he walked up. He was wearing a heavy flannel shirt, and he had a cigarette in his mouth and dark hair that hung over his forehead. He looked old to me. May told me later that he was twenty-four.

“I’m Paul,” he said. “You looked amazing out there.” He held out his hand to May, and I saw the dirt under his nails.

May’s cheeks flushed, and the sadness that had been coming off of her was replaced by a smolder. “Thanks,” she said with a slow smile.

Paul flicked his cigarette out and asked her for the next dance. May let him take her hand, and I stood there, watching the two of them together. As he spun her across the dirt stage, May giggled.

When it was over, he asked for her number. She said, “You’ll have to give me yours. I don’t have a cell yet, and you can’t call me at either of my parents’.” So he gave it to her, and he kissed her hand and made her promise not to lose it.

After that night, May started coming into my room when she got home from sneaking out and telling me things about Paul, who she had started seeing in secret. I remember once she lay down on my bed and whispered excitedly, “You wouldn’t believe the stuff he says to me, Laurel.”

“What does he say?”

She grinned and said, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“Do you kiss him?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“What’s it like?”

“Like being above the earth.” She smiled like the secrets she had were enough to live off of. “He got me this.” She pulled a thin gold chain out from underneath her shirt. It had a charm that said
May
in cursive writing. A heart dangled beneath the
Y
. I thought that it was funny that Paul with his rugged boots and his calloused hands had picked out a necklace like that.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about her kissing Paul. I always imagined that May would have a boyfriend who looked like River Phoenix, but Paul didn’t look anything like that. It scared me a little bit to think of them together, but I’d been there when they met, and the secret of him tied May and me together. She was opening the door to her new world, just a crack, and I wanted to be in it with her. So when she started to take me with her soon after that, to the movie nights where she’d meet him, it didn’t matter if deep down there was something wrong. I would have followed her anywhere.

This year I went to Fallfest with Sky and my friends. I kept seeing May dancing alone in the middle of the floor, and then giggling with Paul, and for a while I couldn’t shake the anxious sinking feeling I had. But then, when the country swing music was over, the band that covers you came on, last in the night. When they started playing “Light My Fire,” it made me feel like the world wasn’t tired. Like it was just starting to spin, faster and faster. Like there was a new beginning. We all danced like we were trying to get our feet to float off the earth. Tristan bounced up and down and shouted with the lyrics, and Kristen shook her long hair. Natalie and Hannah held hands and spun until they fell down on top of each other laughing. When I turned to Sky and kissed him in the middle of the music, I felt like I was holding a match. And I could strike it. Strike it on the trees holding on to their shining brown leaves. Strike it on a star.

After Fallfest, Sky drove me home. As we were sitting in his truck outside, I remembered Dad telling me he wanted to meet Sky. I thought maybe I could get it out of the way, so I asked Sky if he wanted to come in. “Sure,” he said, and followed me up to the front door. My heart started beating fast. It would be the first time that he’d been in my house. It would be the first time that anyone had been in our house in a while, except for me and Dad and once in a while Aunt Amy.

I opened the front door, and we stood there, in the half-dark living room. I realized it was pretty late. Almost ten o’clock. Maybe Dad was already asleep. “Well, this is it,” I said, and flipped on a light. “My house.” Sky standing there made me notice everything again. The dried wildflowers in the ceramic vase. Mom’s painting of the sunset over the mesa that Dad had never taken down. The family picture on the out-of-tune piano. I wondered how it all looked through Sky’s eyes. I wondered if he noticed May in the photo. Even though we’ve been together for a month now, I still don’t know where he went to school before West Mesa, or what happened there, or how he knew my sister. I guess I’m scared to ask.

Just then, Dad came out of his room in his red bathrobe. “Hi, Daddy,” I said. “This is Sky.”

Sky shook his hand and said, “Hello, sir.”

Dad looked at Sky suspiciously and nodded. “How was Fallfest?” he asked.

“It was good,” I said. “We danced.”

Dad smiled a small smile. “That’s nice,” he said.

It seemed too much suddenly, standing there in the quiet house. So I said, “Dad, we’re going to go on a walk.”

Dad frowned, but he nodded. “Get your coat.” Then he kissed my head good night.

When we went out, I was happy to be with Sky in the night air. It was cold in the clean way, in the making-stars-clear way. It smelled like burning leaves. There were pumpkins that never got carved sitting quietly under people’s porch lights. Sky took my fingers and blew hot breath on them, and then wrapped them up in his hands. He said, “Your dad seems nice.”

“Yeah, but I think he’s really sad. He and my mom split up a couple years ago. And then after, you know, May … my mom left for a ranch in California.” I paused. “I guess I’m kind of mad at her, you know? It’s like, it’s not truly fair. Why should she be the only one to get to go away? As if taking care of horses could change anything. It’s supposed to be clearing her head. But I wish she would come home.”

I missed her a lot right then. For some reason, I thought of her in her teddy bear pajamas, making Eggos for May and me in the morning. How she put a drop of syrup in each square. It felt funny to say it out loud—
I’m mad at Mom.
But I am.

Sky nodded. “My dad left us, too, a few years ago. Just walked out. I was so mad at him, I didn’t know what to do. It’s like he left me alone to take care of my mom. And after he went, she got worse. Things were always a little bit hard for her. But now, sometimes it’s like she’s not living in the same reality as everyone else. It’s not her fault she’s like that … I just wish I could make it better. But I can’t.”

It was a big deal that Sky was talking to me about this. I wanted to think of something to help. “Have you … Has she seen a doctor or anything? Maybe there’s medicine that could help?” I suggested.

“I’ve tried. Every time I bring it up, she says that there’s nothing wrong with her.”

I could feel him getting tougher on the outside. I took his other hand so that he’d know I was there, which made it hard to walk. He seemed like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to take the hands away from me or not.

We walked in quiet for a while, until we got into a nearby neighborhood where the houses start to get bigger. We passed by the golf course, and Sky asked, “Do you ever jump the fence?”

I hadn’t yet, but it seemed like a good time to start. I smiled and looked at him over my shoulder and started climbing up. My tights got stuck on the wire at the top, the part above my thigh, and Sky had to pry them loose. He followed me over the fence onto the damp brown November grass. The fall geese that had settled there for the night just kept standing about, seeming not to mind us.

I had taken Sky’s hands again, and since I had them, I said, “Spin with me.” I think that’s the kind of thing that boys like to do but won’t do unless a girl asks them to. We spun and spun and spun until we fell down in a heap, laughing. But for some reason, on the perfect cold night grass next to the geese, my laugh just turned to crying.

“What’s wrong?” Sky asked. I didn’t know how to explain it. I didn’t know where to start. Sky held me against his chest, which made me push harder away from him into whatever the crying was for. But when I got quiet, I was glad to be with him. I didn’t say anything for a while. Neither did he, but it was like we both knew what it meant to be there.