—
I sit on the steps of the trailer, going to pieces in a theatrical display that would make Zelda proud. I cried when I got my mother’s email, but in delicate, ladylike shudders, while Nico held me and rubbed my back like I was a sleeping cat. Those first tears were tears of dismay at my family: my demented mother, who chose to get ahold of me that way; my absent father, who should have been there; my lunatic sister, who was fucking with all of us. But now I cried out of guilt. Because I had left, twice now, and with disastrous effect both times. I cried because I had left Zelda stuck here, tethered to the vines and to our mother like some maiden sacrifice, while I had flounced across Paris, happily bumming Gauloises cigarettes all the while. I had left her with a failing vineyard and an ailing parent, and I had refused even to speak to her. Wyatt was right; she had needed me, and I’d been off having a hissy fit because she’d slept with someone I had. And what if I had now lost both of them?
I had always cared about possession; as a girl, I’d hoarded the few dolls and stuffed animals I owned (my mother thought most toys were tacky and amounted to bribery, and she felt that it demeaned her to have to bribe a five-year-old). I was obsessed with their being “mine.” I would stack them on my neatly made bed, and anyone who wanted to touch them would have to ask my permission, which I only occasionally granted. Zelda, on the other hand, barely cared. Our grandmother Opal gave us American Girl dolls when we were seven or eight; I chose Josefina, who was a recent addition to the American Girl family (a gesture of racial diversity after the dazzling whiteness of Kirsten, Samantha, and Molly), because she most closely resembled me and Zelda. Amazing how “vaguely Slavic” and “Mexican” looked the same in the American Girl universe. Zelda went for Addy, the escaped slave doll, whose story Zelda immediately replaced with that of “Amazon warrior queen.” When Zelda and Addy kidnapped Josefina during a tribal raid, I took every one of Zelda’s stuffed animals and brought them outside (I had seen my mother do this with our belongings countless times—leave a sweater on the floor, it ends up in the yard). I dug a hole in our front yard and buried them all in shallow graves under the sparse grass, a plushy cemetery.
Surprisingly, my sister was unruffled. Usually, Zelda was prone to transfigure from quietly scheming force into berserker, whirling like an exuberant dervish in a haze of deranged, violent joy. But after the furry burial, she bided her time. She waited so long that I thought she had forgotten, or forgiven. One day, the skies over the lake darkened and there was a torrential downpour for hours. When the rain stopped, Zelda calmly informed our mother of my misdeed. Nadine told us that now Josefina belonged to Zelda, as she had no other toys. I dug up the stuffed animals, which had been marinating in mud, and even put them in the washing machine in an attempt to get Josefina back, but Zelda wouldn’t budge. She didn’t want Josefina for herself, but she had learned that I did, and she sacrificed her own menagerie to win the game.
I cry helplessly, remembering this, feeling like the bratty child I was at eight, vindictively punishing Zelda, though punishing only myself in the end. Even now, I can’t tell whether I feel remorse because I’d made Zelda suffer alone out here or because now I am suffering, and I don’t know how to put it back how it was before. I’d been living on my own in a foreign country for nearly two years, and after just one full day of being back on Seneca Lake I had regressed to feeling like a child.
I clutch Wyatt’s sweatshirt, and even though it’s a hot day, I pull it on. It smells like him and like Zelda, like the two of them together, which makes me cry even harder, but it feels good, and I breathe in deeply, moaning softly into my knees. My wailing is almost self-indulgent, but it helps.
“What happened, Zelda?” I sob into my legs. “I can’t do this without you.” I’ve been rocking on the porch step for a few minutes when the phone in my pocket vibrates. I sniff and fumble to get the phone out of my pants. Faced with the password-protected screen, I try her usual password again, the last four digits of the house phone. No luck. I try our birthday, 0531, which doesn’t work either. Then I smile, remembering Zelda’s disdain for passwords, and go for 0000. Z is for zero. The screen disappears, and I’m left with her background image. It’s a picture of both of us, age fourteen. I’m rolling my eyes and standing primly next to Zelda, who is jumping in the air, a halo of her insane curls encircling both our heads. She’s wearing a strange knee-length caftan and has a forearm full of bangles; I’ve got on a snug floral sundress and ballerina flats. I smile, remembering that day.
I notice that the mail icon has several new messages, and I tap it open. There are six or seven new emails, and I scroll through them. All but the most recent are ads. The last one, from one minute ago, is from Zelda herself. I freeze and look around nervously, as though I’ll see her lurking somewhere nearby. I open the message.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: A Brief Correspondence from Beyond the Grave
June 23, 2016 @ 11:42 AM
Ahoy, Ava!
Welcome home, my sweet jet-setting twin!
So glad you were able to wrest yourself away from your dazzling life in the City of Light; I hope my “death” hasn’t interrupted anything too crucial. I’m sure you’ve run into Wyatt already, and I doubt that you two just fell into each other’s arms, filled with remorse at the squandered years. Bet you made him squirm, Ava. But (and this is a recent development) I bet he made you squirm a bit, too; he’s not the gormless, innocent boy you left behind. I hope you don’t mind my improvements.