Love Letters to the Dead

Dear Kurt,

When I got to Aunt Amy’s, she wasn’t home yet. She must have been out with the Jesus Man, I figured, who came into town last week. I lay on the couch and closed my eyes. I guess I fell asleep, because when Aunt Amy came in the door, she woke me up.

I asked her how her week was, trying to tell if she was happy now that the Jesus Man was back, but she just said, “It was good. How was yours?”

“Fine,” I lied, and then she put on 60 Minutes, which is pretty much the only show she likes other than Mister Ed. That little ticking stopwatch must be almost as old as he is. The episode was about free divers. They dive hundreds of feet underwater without any oxygen tanks, and if they’re not careful, they can black out. I got sort of sucked into it, imagining what it would be like, trying to swim up from so far down with no air.

When the show was over, Aunt Amy called me to come eat. She’d made pancakes and bacon. That was May’s favorite—breakfast-for-dinner night. I sat at the kitchen table and waited for the prayer. But instead, Aunt Amy just looked at me and asked, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I said. I wondered if I really looked that bad.

Then she said, “I know you must be thinking of your sister today. Should we pray for her?”

It hit me in a flash. It was a year ago today that May died. How could I have forgotten? I felt awful.

“Um, yeah. Can you do it?” I asked.

She squeezed my hand and then bowed her head and said, “Dear Lord, we ask that you keep May, our beloved sister, daughter, and niece, with you in heaven’s care. We thank you for the blessing of the time we shared with her. We also pray for her sister, Laurel, who she’s left on this earth, that you cherish her heart and stay by her side in her time of grief. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

When she finished, Aunt Amy looked up at me with teary eyes. I didn’t know what to say. I choked down a bite of my pancake and wanted to throw up.

After dinner, I tried to disappear into my room, except a couple of minutes later Aunt Amy came in to bring me the phone. It was Mom. Since we got in that fight last month, our few conversations had been about five seconds long.

“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—