Love Letters to the Dead

When you were alive you acted tough, shouting and drinking and singing your heart out. Giving it to everyone. All your fans. But the edge was too close. Your manager came to the hotel to find you one day when you missed your recording session. He saw your Porsche out front, painted bright and bold and psychedelic, with a night sky and a bright day, a land over the rainbow, a butterfly. The car was just there waiting, ready to go. But inside your hotel room, you were dead, sixteen days after Jim Morrison. The dream of the rock stars was ending. The dream of the sixties—where everything seemed possible, where there was everything and more to explore—didn’t make sense anymore. The beautiful, the brave, were burning up. You had believed that the world could change. And then yours ended. An overdose of heroin. Some booze. It was an accident, everyone assumed.

I still love you, but I’m starting to realize that it’s not a coincidence. That the people I most admire, the ones who seemed to be able to use their bodies, their voices, to fight away the fear, you didn’t win, not really, in the end. It’s gotten harder to write these letters, and maybe that’s why.

But I wanted to tell you the only good news that I have had in a while, which is that Kristen got in to Columbia. For a congratulations present, Tristan baked her a cake with a New York City skyline that he drew on it with frosting, which I thought might have been the nicest thing ever. When we all met in the alley after school to celebrate, he cut the cake and passed it around. Natalie kissed Hannah’s fake-bruised cheekbone and fed her bites of frosting. Tristan was smoking a cigarette in the middle of eating his and saying, “You’re my big city girl, right, babe?” Kristen nodded and smiled a half-sad smile. “Right, babe.”

Graduation is less than two months away. Afterward, Tristan is going to community college here. He already has an apartment picked out that he’s going to move into this summer. And he got a job delivering for Rex’s Chinese. They say that they are going to stay together, but they both know that they won’t. She’s leaving him, and he’s happy for her, as much as he can be. Next year, he’ll probably have a new girlfriend. A college girlfriend. Probably she’ll have blond hair and her eyes won’t stay still like Kristen’s. They’ll dance all around a room, and he’ll miss the way Kristen looked at things, the way she looked at him, like there was nothing else to see.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear Amy Winehouse,

Aunt Amy asked me if I wanted to go to the mall with her today to get some spring clothes, including a dress for Easter, which is coming up tomorrow. She said she was thinking we’d have an aunt-niece day, like a mother-daughter day, I guess. I wasn’t in the mood, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so I agreed.

We were in JCPenney, and I was browsing the tops, when she came back with an armful of dresses for me to try on, all of them too lacy and too long. I don’t know how she even found so many church dresses in a department store, but she must have left the juniors’ section, that’s for sure.

When I came out of the dressing room to show her the first one, she looked at me in the mirror under the fluorescent lights. “You’re so beautiful,” she said, but she said it like it scared her.

I shrugged.

Then she said, “Be careful, Laurel.” And out of nowhere she started to cry.

I put my arms around her, trying to make her better. I was shivering in the dress, the too-early air conditioner making goose bumps all over.

Finally Aunt Amy wiped her eyes on her flowered blouse and smiled at me. I wanted to get out. I didn’t try on my other dresses. I just said I wanted the one I had on, with the long white sleeves and buttoned-up top.

So she paid for the dress and we went to have lunch. The smell of the food court in the mall is like an indoor version of the state fair. I got what I usually get—a Hot Dog on a Stick and lemonade. We sat near the fake trees under the white light from the skylight, where Mom and May and I used to sit. Aunt Amy looked at me picking the batter off the corn dog.

She said, trying to be casual, “So, do you have any crushes? A boyfriend?” As if she hadn’t practically forbidden me from talking to any member of the male species. I wondered if this was a trick. I never told her about Sky, because I didn’t want her freaking out about it. I shook my head no.

“Well, that’s for the best…” And with that she trailed off. She picked back up with, “You know, I am very proud of you. Your mother is, too.”

I swallowed hard, the corn batter stuck in the back of my throat. I didn’t believe that Mom had actually said that. But I guessed that she’d probably told Aunt Amy about our fight, and Aunt Amy was likely trying to smooth things over. I know I should call Mom and apologize, but instead I’ve been avoiding it for the past two weeks.

I didn’t want to get into all of that, so I just tried to smile. “Thanks,” I said. I couldn’t imagine what exactly Aunt Amy was proud of anyway, unless it was the fact that I didn’t have a boyfriend, which is only the case because I got dumped.

Then Aunt Amy asked me, “Do you remember my friend who I went on the pilgrimage with?” She couldn’t keep herself from grinning. “He’s coming into town next week.”