Dead Letters

by Caite Dolan-Leach

  “This is not your fault,” my father says firmly. “And neither was what happened before. You need to hear that.”

  “You think it’s just a goddamn coincidence?” Nadine snivels.

  “It’s just life, Nadine. Accidents happen. People die.” His voice cracks on this last sentence. “You’ve done your best. In spite of everything.”

  “What does that mean?” Nadine snaps in a tone I know all too well. I know exactly where this is headed, and I nudge open the door.

  “You guys okay in here?” I say. Marlon is sitting on a chair next to my mother’s bed, stroking her shoulder. She’s in a fetal position on the mattress, facing away from him. She flinches at my voice.

  “Just get out of here! You’re the one who’s making me sick,” she hisses, her voice choked with tears. “You like to see me this way.” She starts to mumble something into her pillow a moment later. It sounds like a name, repeated again and again: Zelda, I assume. I pull the door shut and retreat to my room, fleeing the sound of my mother’s pain. An alien noise. She has always worked so hard to conceal any evidence of weakness. Maybe Marlon can say something to help her. I strip down to my underwear and climb under the white covers, grateful that I’m too hungover to feel anything at all. I’m asleep within a minute.

  7

  Grimacing before I’m even conscious, I wake up earlier than usual, no doubt due to my early bedtime. I feel intensely grateful that I passed out before I drank anything else, or found my cigarettes. I feel rough but not too fragile, and I roll out of bed with just a few groans and false starts. My hair smells like the smoke outside, and my eye makeup is probably halfway down my face, but it’s not like there will be anyone to criticize my appearance downstairs. I knot my silk kimono around my body and sit on my bed for a minute, looking out the window at the fields. Then I gaze around my pristine bedroom, having woken up in it for the second time. Zelda used to tease me, saying that my room looked like it belonged to a middle-aged housewife, all sedate decor and clean corners. I check Zelda’s phone, which has been charging on my nightstand all night. There’s nothing new, a fact for which I am grateful.

  I walk by my mother’s bedroom door, and I suspect she’s probably still sleeping. God knows how late she stayed up last night, sobbing into her pillow. I wonder if she does this all the time, or if it’s because she has some fleeting awareness of what’s going on in the house, with Silenus, with…the barn.

  Marlon isn’t in the guest room downstairs, which is a surprise. No one in our family is an early riser, and I expected him to be snoring away at this hour, regardless of what time he went to bed. We must be absolutely the worst farmers imaginable, with our inability to crack our eyes open before nine in the morning. I open the fridge door and find some orange juice, which I chug in sincere gratitude.

  “Ava Antipova, what on earth do you think you’re doing?” A familiar voice stops me in my tracks, and I slam the cap back on the orange juice instinctively, hiding my face behind the fridge door. Shit.

  “Grandma Opal,” I say as I shut the fridge door, leaving me exposed in my thin robe, looking like the mess I am.

  “Drinking out of the container, honestly. Your mother…Well, never mind. You look appalling. Come, give me a kiss,” she says. It is not a suggestion.

  I cross the kitchen to lean down and hug her tentatively. She’s even smaller than the last time I saw her, and I’m afraid to hug any harder; her bones feel like they’re cracking even with my reluctant squeeze. She smells like her favorite Chanel perfume, and she’s wearing some elaborate turban on her head, with a fringed sweater draped over her expensive-looking maxi dress.

  My father’s mother is terrifying, and this provides some insight into why Marlon selected my own mother; they’re not dissimilar. But where my mother is aloof and haughty, Opal is invasive and aggressively nurturing. She likes to touch, to be connected through skin and blood. She’s a micromanager. Whenever she came to stay at Silenus, she would stand behind us while we did the dishes, checking to make sure the glasses didn’t spot. While Marlon was still living with us, we were required to make weekly phone calls to her, during which she would ask us if we’d gotten our periods, how often we brushed our teeth, whether we’d kissed any boys yet. She demanded the recited details of physical intimacy. I tried to hide my shame by mumbling into the phone, avoiding any eavesdroppers. Zelda, on the other hand, never minded our grandmother. When Opal asked Zelda if she had any crushes at school, Zelda told her that she wanted to bone our music teacher, then asked Opal if menopause was affecting her shuffleboard activities. I gawked in disbelief, but Opal laughed uproariously and answered with equal honesty. They had always been kindred spirits, with a fondness for animal-print fabrics and bawdy shock value.

  As my grandmother clutches me now, her melted and distorted skin folding off her bejeweled fingers, I imagine that she must be extraordinarily sad. Zelda was her favorite grandchild, unless my father’s most recent brood of offspring has magically supplanted my sister. And just from looking at pictures of Blaze and Bianca, I find that possibility unlikely. Their blond hair always falls in curtains in front of their downturned faces, their eyes glued to iPhones bedecked in sparkling Hello Kitty cases. They always look deeply affronted that they would be required to do anything so undignified as pose for a photo they are not taking themselves. (I have Facebook-stalked their mother and have perused the prolific catalogue of duck-pouted preening they have all too happily offered up to the Inter-gods.) I can easily imagine Opal terrorizing them, and clucking her tongue in dismay over their abstraction, their distance. I picture her pinching the skin of their young bronzed arms, demanding their attention with her clever, wrinkled hands.

  “How are you, Grandma?”

  “How do you think, Ava? I’m exhausted and upset.”

  “I didn’t know you were coming. Marlon didn’t mention it.” I gesture vaguely toward the couch, where Marlon ought to be napping, instead of out ushering his daunting mother to my corner of the world.

  “I got in late from Orlando last night and spent the night in the Radisson in Corning. Had to take a cab there. Your father said I shouldn’t fly in until we had made funeral arrangements, but I figured there was a fat chance of that happening without me here to oversee things. I think he didn’t want me to come.” She waves his preference off like the insignificant detail it is. Then, still holding on to me, she pushes me away until I’m at arm’s length, giving me the once-over. “You really don’t look good, Ava. Probably the jet lag, though,” she explains graciously.

  “Or the death of my twin.” She flinches, and I feel the day’s first flicker of happiness.

  “Of course you have your reasons. I was very sorry to hear about Zelda. It really is…unbelievable.” I narrow my eyes, wondering if she has her own suspicions, but there’s no glimmer of double meaning in her face. “She emailed me the day she died, you know. We’d spoken a lot this last year, she was so lonely.” Grandma Opal looks at me meaningfully, and I know that she considers this my fault. “She wrote saying that she loved me and had always appreciated me. It was the sweetest thing.”

  “How unlike Zelda,” I say flatly.

  Grandma Opal hardens her jaw. “She was tough on the outside, dear, but a real softie when it came down to it. You’re the one who’s like your mother.” This is an easy shot, but it still hurts.

  “Have you seen Nadine yet?” I ask. “I might need some help looking after her, while you’re here. There’s a lot I have to do still, and I wouldn’t want you to have to deal with it, in your condition.” She can needle me all she wants to, but Opal hasn’t been able to drive herself anywhere since failed cataract surgery a couple of years ago. And in this part of the world, that means she’s pretty well stuck. I know being trapped in the house with Nadine will make her reconsider being nasty to me.

  “Old age isn’t a condition, Ava. It’s something only the lucky few get to experience.”

  “Grandma, could you just let me be for a
second?”

  “You’re fine when you just unclench and relax, Ava,” she says, unable to resist having the final jab.

  “A popular opinion.” I rifle through the cupboards, looking for coffee. There’s only a little left, and I sigh in exasperation. I will have to go grocery shopping for the four of us today, plan a menu beyond Betsy’s unappreciated casserole. I’ve gained another dependent. “Where’s Marlon?” I ask. “Probably not out working the fields.”

  “He’s gone to the police station, to talk to someone official over there. He said you were sorting it out yesterday, but I told him that was no job for you. He needs to go and take charge, make sure it’s done right.” The implication being that I can do neither, presumably. But he’s welcome to the job. “He’s her father, after all. He’s the head of your family.” Ha.

  “They told me yesterday there was no official ruling yet,” I inform her. “Maybe they’ll have one this morning.”

  “How can they not know at this stage? It’s been days. Honestly, I may have to hire someone to make sure everything’s being done right.”

  “I’m not sure you can hire someone to bring Zelda back from the dead, Grandma,” I say sharply, instantly realizing that this may not be true. I think a decent PI could probably find my sister, wherever she’s hiding. But I’m hardly going to suggest that.

  “I know that, doll.” She comes to stand behind me and strokes the nape of my neck in a way that is supposed to be comforting. I do my best not to flinch at the feel of her papery skin brushing my own. “Ava, it’s okay to let go, to let down your façade. Everyone knows what Zelda was to you, even if you two hadn’t spoken for a while. I know she would forgive you for that.”

  “Forgive me? For the shit she pulled before I left?” I shake my head in disbelief. If Opal knew the whole story, which I’m certain no one does, she’d probably still take Zelda’s side—but I’m not the one who needs forgiving. Zelda had our grandmother, and everyone else, wrapped around her finger, figuring that I was off having some temper tantrum in Paris. “You have no idea what was going on here, Grandma.”

  “I know there were some childish jealousies, some sort of disagreement over a boy, but really, Ava, you can’t walk away from your twin sister because of some high school crush.”

  “He wasn’t a crush. It was—Jesus, why am I even arguing with you? Zelda manipulated you into feeling bad for her, and that’s fine. I don’t have to justify every fucking move I make to everyone in this family!”

  They are all toxic. I fling a coffee cup into the sink. It cracks into satisfying shards and the noise is immediately comforting. I reach for another, but my grandmother grabs my arm and looks me in the eye. She has our eyes, Marlon’s too-green eyes. “That’s enough, Ava. There’s no need to be unnecessarily destructive.”

  I snort and raise my arms in surrender, prepared to flee the room.

  “I brought coffee,” Marlon says from the doorway, looking back and forth between his mother and daughter with a harrowed expression. He’s holding a few bags of groceries and some to-go cups of coffee, and I’m almost weak-kneed in relief at seeing him. This is how my father gets away with his perennial negligence and failure to come through: He shows up at just the right moment, with exactly what you need. And because it’s so unexpected, you feel this surge of gratitude toward him, like he’s accomplished something superhuman. I know this, deep in the marrow of my bones, which are made of the marrow of his, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m momentarily choked up at the sight of the coffee that I will not have to make myself and the groceries that I will not have to buy and put away. How we’ve idolized that man, that mythological figure who had bequeathed us his ruinous genes and extricated himself from his paternal role, vaulting off in pursuit of his next jaunty lark.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I say, crossing the kitchen to relieve him of his gifts. I give him a meaningful look with my back turned to Grandma Opal, and he smiles in acknowledgment.

  “Ma, I got one for you too,” he says, handing her a cup.

  “I don’t drink coffee anymore, Marlon. It leads to breast cancer. You know that.” She looks over at me pointedly. “And you know it’s bad for you too,” she adds, clucking at her son.

  “Great,” I say. “I’ll give it to Mom. She’ll appreciate it.”

  Marlon sets the bags on the counters and starts opening cupboards, trying to figure out where everything should be put away.

  “Well, Marlon, what did you learn from the police?” Opal asks. My dad clears his throat uncomfortably.

  “Well, they found some, uh, human remains,” he says. I almost drop my coffee.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “There are some, I guess, bones? A skeleton? They have to do DNA testing to make sure it’s Zelda.”

  I’m speechless, totally without words. Sweet Jesus, Zelda, who was in that barn?

  “Ava, did you hear what I said?” Marlon prompts me. “They’d like you to come in. They want to use your DNA to confirm whatever they find. They say it may take a few days before they have any results, but they need a family member to confirm. I offered mine, but they said yours would be better.”

  “Okay,” I say blankly.

  “They, uh, also want to ask you some questions.”

  “What on earth for?” Opal says.

  “They say they have reason to believe that there’s been some kind of…foul play?” Marlon sounds deeply unsure that he should be telling us this. Opal and I are both silent. I wonder if we’re thinking the same thing.

  “They think she was murdered?” I ask.

  “Apparently, there were a few, well, red flags. The doors seem to have been chained shut, and the fire was very intense. If it had been started by natural causes, it should have been slower, they’re saying. Something about an accelerant.”

  I want to sit down. I want to get drunk. I want Zelda to walk into the house this second with a silly grin on her face saying, “Surprise! I just wanted us all in the same room, a family again! LOL!”

  “So they’re investigating a murder,” Opal says slowly. “My granddaughter was murdered.” She is settling into the role, writing a script for herself as an entirely different kind of bereaved grandmother. Cooking up her own story.

  “They don’t know for sure yet. They say the first thing is to confirm that it was her. They say she had a text message, before she died? Saying she was going to be at the barn?” Marlon directs this last part at me.

  I nod. “That’s what they told me.”

  “It seems she was also caught up in some, uh, unpleasant stuff. She has a drug dealer friend? Do you know anything about that, Ava?”

  “Zelda’s always been wrapped up in ‘unpleasant stuff.’ It wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” I answer. “Do they think it’s related?”

  Marlon shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  We all look around the kitchen silently, thinking. I sip my coffee, which is now room temperature, the way I like it. Marlon clears his throat.

  “There’s something else.” Opal and I both turn to look at him. “Did you write this, Ava?” He tugs a newspaper from one of the shopping bags and hands it to me. It’s open to the obituary page.

  Zelda Antipova passed away this summer solstice in a fiery blaze that prematurely claimed her young life. She was incomparable. She was a shooting star in a darkened sky. She was a cascading waterfall in a lush hidden glen. She was the full moon and the summer sun, a brilliant flower that faded too soon. Of faults we shall not speak but, rather, forgive all those small shortcomings and missteps and bid her farewell with a desolate heart, void of recrimination and blame and, indeed, anything but bitter anguish that she was taken from us so soon. She will be missed, she will be remembered, she will be mourned. She was very special, very loved, and treasured by everyone she touched with her short, too-short life. Etc. Etc.

  “Yep,” I finally answer through gritted teeth, after reading the eulogy a few times. I can hardly lay the blame at Zelda’s
doorstep without revealing what I know. Which she knows, goddamn her. How did she get the thing printed? I will try to remember to research how you go about getting an obituary in the local paper. Though this will no doubt look a bit odd, given that I’m meant to have just done it. “It was a mistake. I’d had a few glasses of wine, was feeling maudlin.” I shrug. “I emailed it yesterday. We can print a retraction if you want.”

  “Why in God’s name would we do that? I think it’s lovely, Ava.” Opal leans over and gives me a wet kiss on the cheek. “It’s honest, spoken from your real heart. I think everyone can appreciate that.” She rubs my shoulders insistently. Marlon doesn’t look convinced, just raises his eyebrows and sips his coffee. I feel one of the phones vibrate in my pocket.

  “I have to go give Mom breakfast,” I say quickly, trying to beat a fast retreat. “Then I guess I’ll head back to the station, answer their questions.” Marlon nods.

  8

  Hardly able to convince my mother to choke down the banana I offer her, I throw up my hands in exasperation after five minutes of negotiation. I imagine this is karmic justice for some refusal of mine as a child, but this thought does nothing to assuage my irritation with her. I prop her up in bed and leave her with my laptop, the screen open to Netflix. I think she’ll be able to figure it out, but I tell Marlon to check in on her occasionally. Opal is hard at work scrubbing the kitchen and bathrooms, which I appreciate. She may be obnoxious, but at least she’s tidy.

  I’m still annoyed at the last email Zelda sent. She knew that Marlon likes to escape in the mornings. She knew he would flee the ladies of the house and buy the newspaper.

  To: zazazelda@gmail.com

  From: zazazelda@gmail.com

  Subject: Everybody Loves a Dead Girl, Everybody Loves a Murder Plot (Or, the Most Poetical Topic)

  June 24, 2016 @ 10:05 AM

  Ever-loving twin,