Dead Letters

by Caite Dolan-Leach

  My phone is lying on the sheets next to me, and my whole body clenches when it vibrates. I stare in mute dismay at the name displayed on the screen and push the decline icon with a wave of revulsion. At myself, mostly. But I can’t talk to Nico right now. Later, after I’ve marshaled my meager resources, I will call him back and summon the wherewithal to lie to him, tell him I love him, that I miss him. For now, though, I have to focus on getting out of bed.

  I work myself up enough to slide out from my white sheets, and I grope around for something to cover myself with. I hate sleeping naked. It’s supposed to be sensuous and erotic to sleep with bare skin whispering against pristine sheets, but I have always hated it. I feel unprotected and unlike myself. I need the feeling of a shirt flat against my breasts and belly, of shorts clinging to my thighs and ass, concealing everything and staying close. When I sleep alone, I swaddle myself in the sheets, twining them around my feet and ankles. I have always wanted to be languorous and relaxed, to loll comfortably in a messy bed without a stitch on, but I manage to fall asleep in the buff only when I’m very drunk. Which I was last night, apparently. I slide the kimono over my naked body, but even this is not enough support. I tug on a long Lycra tank top from my suitcase, as well as some boy-shorts underwear, and put the kimono back on over them. The tight fabric makes me feel better, as it smooths out the lines of my body, concealing bulges and ripples beneath its stretchy sheath. With a quick glance to ensure that Wyatt is still sleeping, I scuttle out the door and downstairs, desperate for hydration.

  Pausing in the hallway, I spare a thought for something other than my miserable physical state: Zelda’s game. She has led me as far as M and I have supplied her with the N, as was no doubt her intention. I feel some anxiety as I contemplate O.

  Our grandmother, Opal, mailed us a Ouija board for our tenth birthday. We tore away at the packaging in frenzied anticipation. I immediately wanted to take the board and planchette for a spin, but Zelda gravely proclaimed that we had to wait until dark. Of course she was right. That evening, we crept upstairs, leaving Marlon and Nadine to snipe at each other below, oblivious and never suspecting that their offspring were about to raise the dead. Like all mediums and hucksters, we understood the importance of setting the scene: Locked in the bathroom, we draped a dark sheet to construct a gloomy tent, lit candles dangerously close to the fabric, and waited until we felt sufficiently steeped in the supernatural.

  “Shh, you can feel the air getting colder,” Zelda whispered.

  “I can’t feel it.”

  “I guess you’re not as attuned to the other world as I am.”

  I rolled my eyes, though secretly, I agreed.

  “Give me your hands,” my sister whispered, and I complied. Our moist palms hovered over the cardboard plane, and in spite of my strong rationalist streak, my heart thumped a little. What if?

  “Who should we call on?” I asked. “Grandpa Chuck?” We had never met our paternal grandfather, but Opal had let drop enough caustic commentary on her late ex-husband for us to be deeply curious about that roguish figure.

  “What about…Aunt Nina?” Zelda said. I shivered. Nadine never spoke of her sister, and enough mystery and doom surrounded her death for me to instinctively shy away from the thought of summoning her into this house. But that, of course, is why Zelda wanted her. “They say children move more easily between the veils,” she uttered, fully in character.

  “Isn’t it, I don’t know, a bad idea? To summon someone who died too early?”

  Zelda ignored me.

  “I summon thee, Nina, child of my bloodline, ancestor of my bones! In the name of our mother, and her mother before you, I call you to us!” she intoned impressively. Her command was greeted with nothing but silence, and the sound of our breath, weirdly amplified to sound almost like…someone else beneath the sheets? My skin crawled.

  “Say something!” Zelda hissed. “You have to call her too!”

  “Um, I call thee, Nina, my . . aunt. I call you from the otherworld to visit us and…speak?” I finished feebly. I could feel rather than see Zelda’s eyes rolling, but she continued.

  “We are Geminis, the twins, and we live between the worlds, one twin living and one dead. I, Gemini, call thee—show yourself!”

  I found this profoundly spooky—I had never heard Zelda describe our sun sign this way. The creeps were amplified when the planchette jerked beneath my fingers, skating across the board on its cheap felt feet.

  “Zelda, knock it off! I know that’s you!”

  “It’s not! I’m not doing it!” Zelda answered, eyes wide. In the dark, she looked genuinely surprised. The planchette skittered agilely, coming to rest on the H.

  “That’s not funny!” I protested. Zelda shook her head—she was frightened. The planchette moved, swiftly spelling out a message from the dead. H-E-L-P-M-E.

  “Zelda, don’t! I want to stop!”

  “I’m not doing anything! It’s Aunt Nina—”

  “It’s not! I’m not playing anymore!” I tried to stand up, but someone—Zelda, I fervently hoped—gripped my wrist with icy fingers. I stumbled, careening into the sheet and knocking over a candle, which instantly ignited the fabric. In horror I watched as Zelda writhed, struggling to free herself. And in the light of the flame, I convinced myself that there was another body moving beneath that fiery shroud. Panicked, I shrieked and began pawing at the sheet. Zelda emerged with her own yelp. We stampeded to the bathroom door and flung it open to be greeted by Marlon, who had obviously just taken the steps three at a time, and Nadine, close behind him.

  Marlon dashed into the bathroom, scooped up the smoldering sheet, tossed it into the bathtub, and switched on the taps in a smooth ballet.

  “Girls! What on earth were you doing?” Nadine glared at us, recovered sufficiently from her momentary alarm to look pissed off.

  “It was the Ouija board! Zelda wanted to call Nina and she came!” I blubbered, giving up my sister without even batting an eye. I was rattled, and wanted to be comforted.

  “Nina?” Marlon sucked in air, looking at Nadine in concern, as though worried the very name would set her off. He wasn’t wrong.

  “Why? Why would you try to speak to her?” Nadine whispered in a tone that presaged very bad news.

  “She’s our aunt,” Zelda said, stubborn and unrepentant. “You never talk about her.”

  “Girls, I think maybe it’s time for bed,” Marlon suggested, trying to escape the bathroom.

  “She was terrified! She asked us to help her! She begged us—”

  Nadine slapped her, suddenly and hard. We were all absolutely silent, watching Zelda. She didn’t raise her hand to her face, or start crying, as I might have done. She simply walked out of the bathroom and slammed the door to her room. The three remaining members of the family Antipova stared at one another, each of us feeling guilty and not knowing what to say. Nadine bit her lip, as though wanting to apologize, but I, a follower, as ever, imitated Zelda and left, leaving my parents to clean up the soggy mess.

  Zelda hadn’t locked her bedroom door, and I slunk into the room, shamefaced and remorseful. She was sitting on the floor, with a book about supernatural sightings open in front of her. I didn’t know whether she’d been reading it earlier or had just opened it now.

  “Do you think it was really her?” I whispered, curling up next to her and leaning my head tentatively on her shoulder. Stiff at first, Zelda finally took a deep breath and relaxed, giving me permission. And forgiveness.

  “I wanted it to be,” she said softly. “I wanted to be able to speak to the dead. To talk to someone in our family.” I thought she might be crying, and I laid my fingers on her wrist uncertainly.

  “What you said about being a Gemini—one of us living, one dead?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, sniffing deeply and shaking her head. “I was just playing.”

  —

  Wondering if I’ve puzzled out the fifteenth letter, I kneel down and look into the bottom she
lf of the bookcase in the library, where the games are kept. I tug out the Ouija board and paw through the box, looking for any sign of my sister. There is nothing. To be thorough, I examine the Scrabble set as well, but I’m already losing enthusiasm for the hunt, with my head pounding and light.

  I head down the steps, moving slowly. Marlon isn’t on the couch, and he (or Opal) has folded up his blankets and pillows.

  While I’m in the kitchen, ferreting around in the fridge, the doorbell rings. I’d forgotten we even had a doorbell, and for a few slow-witted beats I don’t recognize the sound. I wait, half-hoping someone else will appear to answer it, but of course they don’t. Unhappily, I gird my loins for social interaction.

  I pull open the door, and sitting on the step is a large envelope. The inscription on the front reads: Open me, Ava, only one I see! I scan the driveway and the borders of the yard in frantic frustration; she was just here, in the flesh! She’s nearby, possibly yards away from me. But I can’t see her. She’s lurking offstage, watching me dance. The inscription makes me shiver as I look at the blank, silent pines that must conceal her.

  Dear Obsessive, Obtuse Ava,

  O is for…obvious! Oh, you’ve figured out the game at last! Of course, I knew you might need some extra clues; close reading was never really one of your strong suits. Ornate as the whole thing may seem, I thought you might appreciate my final efforts to make you think, make you squirm, make you work a little harder than usual. Or maybe just force you to recognize that the whole world usually just bends over for you, that you are never truly challenged, and that it’s very good for you when someone puts you through your paces.

  Oy, enough with the letters! Now that you’ve cottoned on, we can settle into a less rigorously structured way of communicating, right? Naturally, you’re probably tormented with guilt at the notion of poor, maligned Jason, possibly going down for a crime he clearly could not have committed. Are you tempted to saunter on down to the station, clear up all the confusion? I know you are; you have always been worshipful of rules. I trust and hope that you’ll be able to suppress your usual instincts, though, until we get to the end of the alphabet. Trust me, Jason has earned some time in the hot seat. Hopefully our underachieving police department will be able to uncover some crimes for which he is legitimately guilty (and, oh, they are legion!) and he’ll receive karmic retribution for being the irredeemable scumbag that he truly is. You mustn’t worry, Ava dear; I vetted my fall guy meticulously. I considered a sizable fistful of deserving candidates (wouldn’t you just love to see the short list?) and contemplated their qualifications very carefully before I settled on Mr. Jason Reynolds. If he goes down for this (and he definitely might; I’m not so terribly confident in the sleuthing capabilities of our uniformed officers), it will be no less than he deserves. Would that I could have framed him for something more heinous than the careless murder of a washed-out, lonely drug addict who had recently begun a downward spiral of recklessness and dissolution. He’s earned worse than he’ll get. And I don’t even know if there’s enough to make a murder stick, as they say.

  Now, back to the mystery at hand. Since you’ve divined what we’re playing at, you’re no doubt thinking your way through the rest of the letters. Any guesses for what’s up next? Are you preempting, questioning, righteously second-guessing? Thinking ungenerous, vitriolic thoughts, wishing that your damned sister would bugger off and leave you be? Probably, yes. But you’re also having the time of your life. I’m pretty sure you’ll stumble across P soon enough, sister mine. You’re getting closer all the time.

  Your Opaque, Obstreperous, Oh-so-clever Twin,

  Z is for Zelda

  P.S. Did you think I skipped N? Honestly, what do you take me for? N is for nasty. Used in a sentence: Ava and Wyatt did the nasty.

  “Zelda!” I scream into the yard. “I know you’re fucking there!” No one answers, naturally. I hope the neighbors can’t hear me, far away as they are. I wander back inside to start my day, seething.

  Obvious, indeed, I reflect. I have belatedly realized something else: Zelda is competing with me on my own turf. She is upstaging me in my own area of expertise. Like a fool, I haven’t thought of it until now, but she is taunting me with my own research. I’ve been working on OuLiPo and detective fiction, and here she has delivered me a charming locked-room mystery with flavors of Perec. Recycling narratives, playing with the genre—she always liked to say there were no new stories. She has adopted the form of a mystery, cast me as the detective, and set the whole plot in motion, all while forcing us to remain locked in the constrained repetition of the alphabet. I assume she was able to find something about my research project online and has set up this game as a special way to jeer at me. To beat me. To outthink me. To show me she is cleverer.

  On the landing in front of my mother’s room, I lean my head against the door, the cool wood supporting my forehead. I turn the lock and let myself in. Nadine is groggy and bleary-eyed; no doubt she’s hungover, too, from her cocktail of meds and wine.

  “No breakfast today, Zaza,” she mumbles. “I can’t eat. I’ve gained a pound and a half.”

  I wonder if Zelda was silly enough to let her have access to a scale, or if this is pure guesswork and paranoia.

  “It’s okay, Mom. This isn’t a beauty pageant. And your nightgowns will accommodate a much more significant weight gain,” I answer, leaning over to fluff her pillow.

  “I won’t eat,” she says stubbornly, clenching her teeth and pursing her lips. I glance at the deep wrinkles around her puckered mouth and think that she looks so very old. Her vanity seems somehow to have sustained itself even as her body and her looks have decayed. Her beauty has rotted away in this bed, her mind collapsed. This is a terrible way to die.

  “You have to eat. You’re too thin as it is.”

  After getting her dressed, we make our feeble way down the stairs, both of us wobbly. I deposit my mother on the downstairs deck and rifle through the fridge. I know I have to drink something, to begin the slow journey out of hangover hell, but I don’t want to; the idea of swallowing anything seems preposterous. Finally, I find a coconut water squirreled away in the back of the fridge, and I sip on it delicately while I make my mother a smoothie. I use the full-fat yogurt Marlon has bought with satisfaction, and I add two heaping scoops of high-calorie almond butter. Outside on the deck, I hand over her breakfast without a word and perch on the arm of one of the Adirondack chairs, sipping the coconut water. Not only is Marlon no longer on the couch but the door to the guest room has been left open, the made bed clearly visible. Fuck knows where he and Opal have gone. At the moment, I feel nothing but relief that they are not here while Wyatt sleeps it off upstairs. I fret for a moment, wondering how I will get him out of the house. I don’t want to think about any of that. I want to be alone, in a dark room with Internet access, to watch movies all day and not think about myself, my life, my twin.

  Feeling unsteady, I slide into the chair next to my mother, clutching my coconut water. I briefly consider getting up to fix myself a Bloody Mary or find a beer in the back of the fridge, just to keep myself going; I know that while it doesn’t sound appealing, it will make me feel better. Instead, I grit my teeth with something resembling resolve. I will not drink today. I can’t. I have to get myself under control, or this will all spiral quite unpleasantly, even more than it already has. I sip my water and look out at the lake. Its movement makes me nauseous. Closing my eyes unhappily, I let the sun warm my eyelids.

  “Ava?” my mother says timidly next to me. I crack my eyelids reluctantly and look over at her sideways.

  “What, Mom?”

  “Ava, honey, are we in Cape Cod? I don’t recognize the beach.”

  “No, we’re at Silenus, Mom. On Seneca Lake? The vineyard you built.”

  “Oh. Is it…a good vineyard?”

  “Yes,” I lie baldly. “It’s great. People come from all over the country to drink your wine.”

  “Oh.” She looks around
herself fretfully, as though she doesn’t quite believe me. I close my eyes again, and I almost nod off in the sunlight.

  “Ava, honey?” Nadine says after a few minutes, jarring me back awake.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Drink your smoothie, Mom,” I say with a resigned sigh, and haul myself out of the chair. Back inside, I flop down on the couch, facing the glass doors so that I can keep track of Nadine. A nap. Maybe if I just take a nap I’ll feel better able to get up and deal with Zelda’s puzzle and my mother. And Nico. Oh, God. My stomach swoops violently, and I realize what’s happening almost a moment too late. I barely make it to the bathroom before releasing a hot jet of coconut water and the dregs of last night’s red wine into the toilet bowl. My body is racked with the violence of reverse peristalsis, every corner of my consciousness focused on bringing up the contents of my stomach. Crouched over the bowl, my knees grinding into the cool tile, my arms clinging to the seat, I am the definition of abjection. I feel so thoroughly debased and full of shame that I am actually cleansed. When I finish, I am shaking violently, and tears are running soothingly down my cheeks. My heart is pounding and my hands are trembling, but I feel much, much better. I collapse back and sit against the bathroom wall, letting the worst of the quaking subside.

  This old, familiar sensation. How many times have I sat in this bathroom, experiencing this exact feeling? It is one of the most bizarre paths to empowerment, and yet I never feel more in control. I chose this when I chose those last two bottles of wine, just as I have chosen it countless times when I felt that dinner had been too indulgent, or I had eaten too much ice cream, or had fought with my mother. A worried part of me insists that I was not in control of what just happened, no more than I was in control of my choices last night; I am subject to the whims of my chemistry, which says “Drink this” and, a few hours later, “Bring it back up.” I have never been less powerful than I am right now. And I wonder if maybe what I really love is being out of control, relinquishing agency and giving free rein to my damaged brain and my warped limbic system. Not being prim, competent, polished Ava. The contents of the toilet bowl are grotesque, and so am I, the person who produced them. Right now, I’m not the kind of girl who wears pearls to meet the future in-laws, or gets perfect grades at Cornell, or seamlessly takes over the family business. Right now, I’m a shattered mess who is leaking bodily fluids and staring at her own shockingly yellow bile. I close my eyes and lay my cheek on the bathroom floor.