Love Letters to the Dead

“I wasn’t good enough to keep them together.”


I wished I knew what to say back, but I didn’t. “You’re good enough for me,” I said meekly.

May smiled at me, although it was a sad smile. “Thanks, Laurel.” And then she added, “At least we always have each other.”

I made a decision right then that I would love her even more than I already did—enough to make up for everything else.

After that day our lives turned different. Dad stayed in the house, and Mom moved into an apartment, which sort of made it seem obvious that the split was her idea, although they never explained that part of it. The next month May went to high school, and she started to act happy again, but it wasn’t the same. Now she had a new world to be in, and it didn’t include any of us. Something invisible took her. She was there, but gone.

We still did one thing together, all four of us, because Mom and Dad said it was important, which was to have family dinners at the Village Inn like we’d done every Friday since we were kids. It was always strained, Mom and Dad talking mostly to us and not to each other. I was quiet, but May told stories, pretending like everything was normal. The waiters would stare at her. Bucky, the Village Inn bear (i.e., the owner dressed in costume), would come over to our table, even though we weren’t little kids anymore. May played along and flirted with him. She didn’t give Mom and Dad anything to complain about. She was beautiful and smart and she had good grades and talked about lots of friends. But we never saw the girls she used to hang out with in middle school anymore. She was always going out, no one was ever coming over, to either of the houses.

When we were with Dad, he’d let us order stuffed-crust pizza or Chinese takeout, and then he’d retreat to his bedroom. I think he didn’t want us to see him being sad. He still tried to have rules, so May had to sneak out when she wanted to stay out late, but it didn’t seem difficult for her to get away with it.

Mom tried hard during our weeks with her, almost too hard. She got strawberry kiwi tea (May’s favorite and mine, too), and hung prisms in the windows over the dingy brown carpets in her new apartment, and set up her easels, and took us out to dinner at the 66 Diner, which we probably couldn’t afford. Mom would stare at May over milk shakes, her eyes welling with tears, and ask, “Are you mad at me?” May would push her hair back and say, “No,” the crack in her voice barely hidden. May couldn’t just scream I hate you at our parents, the way that some kids can, and know that everything would be okay later. With Mom, it’s like if May did that, she would have crumbled. Whenever May wanted to go out with friends, Mom looked sad, like she felt abandoned or something. But she let her go. She gave her a key and didn’t say when to be home. She wanted to be the cool parent, I guess, or to make up for things.

At first I’d asked to go with May, but May would say I was still too young. So I’d be left in the apartment. Mom would ask, “How do you think your sister is doing?” Or, “Who’s she going out with? There must be a boy, right? Do you think she likes him?” Mom was testing to see if I had the answers. And for a while, I just pretended. I answered the questions as if I knew, even though I didn’t.

But the worst was when I’d hear Mom cry herself to sleep. I’d lie awake and stare up at the blank white wall and remember how May used to cast fairy spells when we were little to make it better.

When Aunt Amy dropped me off at Dad’s tonight, I thought about how he’s the only one from our used-to-be-normal family who hasn’t left me. I wanted to do something nice for him, so I went into his bedroom and brought him some apples. I’d cut them up and spread cream cheese and cinnamon on them. This is something Mom would do, and I thought he’d like it. He was listening to baseball. The season is over, so he plays CDs with broadcasts of the greatest Cubs games that he orders online. This is what he does basically always now, when he’s not at work. Maybe it takes him back to the days when he used to play himself. He was really good at it in high school, and then he used to play on a team here just for fun. We loved to go and watch him when we were kids. I remember the smell of the first sweet summer grass, and the big lights that would come on when it started to turn to dusk. If Dad got a hit, we’d jump up in the stands and scream for him.

When I gave him the plate of apples, he smiled. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were teary or if it was just the light. Sometimes the light is like that. He turned the game to half volume and said, “You doing okay?”

He was wearing his nightshirt, the one that May and I made him for Father’s Day one year. It says We love you, Dad in puff paint, with a small and an even smaller handprint, side by side, on the front of it.

“Yeah, Dad.”

Then he said, “Who is it that you’re always talking to on the phone? Is it a boy?”