Dead Letters

by Caite Dolan-Leach

  I wander outside through the open deck door. It’s a hot, sunny day, and I shut my eyes, feeling the warmth on my skin, the heated wood from the deck reaching up to my toes in splintered fragments. Giving in to a sudden impulse, I dash upstairs and change into a bathing suit and a sarong snatched from Zelda’s lair. I grab Nadine’s big sun hat and sunglasses, a bottle of water, and head down to the lake in my bare feet.

  It’s a bit of a walk to the water, all the way along the long tractor trail from the vineyard to our waterfront. We have a dock and a rudimentary pavilion down by the lake, and we used to keep a rowboat and a kayak down there as well. I wonder if they’ll still be there. The grass is alive with insects, and my nose fills with the scent of home. Churned dirt, cold water, and, somewhere nearby, a field of alfalfa.

  As I approach the dock, I see Marlon, stretched out seal-like. The dock looks rickety and not wholly safe. Marlon has opted for the secure sturdiness of the rocks along the water. This is probably sensible. He appears thin and fit, a California tan bronzing his skin. There’s a glass next to him, and a partly empty bottle is bobbing cheerfully in the lapping waves at his feet, glinting in the sun. He sits up when he hears the stones shifting underneath my feet. Used to wearing shoes, my soles hurt as I walk on the tiny rocks, and I pick my way carefully to where he is lying.

  “Wine?” he offers pleasantly. I hesitate. I said I would take a day off, that I’d give my liver a chance to regenerate. But I’ve had a fucking brutal day so far. Just one glass, I decide. Marlon hands me a plastic cup and points to the open bottle cooling in the chilly water of the lake. I help myself to the rest and sit down next to him on the rocks. We stare silently out at the flat blue water. It is perfectly quiet, without even the buglike whine of motorboats or Jet Skis. Far on the other side of the lake, a big sailboat is coasting north, toward Geneva. “I’ve really missed this,” Marlon says softly. “This…place.” I nod. That will be as close as he’ll ever come to saying that he’s missed us.

  “It’s beautiful,” I agree. It is, but there is something dark underneath those waters. There is something wrong here; I’ve always felt it.

  “I could never stay, though. Something…” he echoes, as though I’ve spoken aloud.

  “We Antipovas have restless feet,” I say, trying to let him off the hook. I’ve been furious with him for so long, have wanted to hear him excuse himself for disappearing and leaving us with Nadine, but suddenly, I don’t want the burden of absolving him. Let him seek his own redemption, from someone else in a better mood. I drink down my glass of wine and stand up. “I’m going to go swim,” I announce. “Hot day.” I shuck off my sarong and stick a toe into the cold, deep water. I glance toward the dock; we used to launch ourselves into the water from its edge, and it is a much easier point of entry to the lake, but I’m reluctant to venture out onto the decayed structure. I imagine that I can see it swaying in concert with the slight stirrings of the lake’s surface.

  “Have you started swimming again?” he asks.

  “No thanks to you,” I snap, filled with fury at the amused tone of his voice.

  I don’t turn around. I plow farther into the water. The bottom is sharp and rocky, and my feet protest, but I move as quickly as I can without tumbling over. Making inelegant progress, I proceed unsteadily. The water is fucking freezing. When I’m waist-deep, I reluctantly lower myself all the way in, submerging my head. I’m instantly sobered by the chill. I kick underwater, stroking along without surfacing as long as I can. I pop up only when I start to panic, when my brain is begging for oxygen and it is all I can think about. I gasp, sucking in air and blinking water out of my eyes. I can no longer touch the bottom, and there is a thick skein of seaweed wrapped around my ankle. I flap around nervously, trying to shake loose from it. A thick barrier of subaquatic foliage separates the shore from the darker blue waters farther out into the lake, even this early in the summer, and I paddle hard to escape the waving tendrils that seek my belly and thighs. Mostly, I try not to think about huge, prehistoric fish sucking through the silt of the lake beneath me. I breaststroke out into the lake, breathing hard and forcing myself to be rational, to let the cold numb me to old terrors. The shore grows smaller behind me, and I stretch out muscles that haven’t been used in years. When I finally look back at the shore, I can see my father dozing on the bank, seeming far away and abstract, as ever. I roll onto my back and float and stare up at the pinkening sky and let myself dissolve into the freezing calm of the lake.

  16

  Patiently picking my way through the jagged zebra-mussel minefield of the shallow water, I emerge from the lake as clumsily as I entered it, quivering and exceptionally waterlogged. Marlon is still propped up on the bank, and he looks in my direction only when I stumble across the rough gravel. I flop down next to him, just close enough that I can feel how warm his skin is, and how chilled mine is. I drip-dry on the warmed stones, wringing out my hair like it’s a dishrag. Marlon has cracked open a second bottle, and I pour a solid slug into my plastic cup. We are companionably silent. I stretch out on the rocks, replicating the pose of submission to the sun that I had taken in the water, arms over my head, belly stretched, chin upturned. Soon the sun will begin to set in earnest, but now it is still early, just days after the solstice.

  I lie back and consider my options. What if I just left? Maybe I could simply go back to Paris, book a flight tomorrow afternoon and leave here. Marlon and Opal could deal with the funeral. Or not. I’m not sure I feel like indulging Zelda with a festive celebration. The morning after next I could be taking a taxi from the airport and sliding into bed next to Nico. The memory of Nico makes me cringe in sudden guilt, and I jettison the feeling immediately, shying away from it.

  I can’t just leave, though. Zelda has sucked me in, and I want to get to the end of her alphabet. I have to know what she’s been up to, and why. I need to know the ending. Have I solved P already? Police, Paris, passport. Promiscuity, I think with a vaguely contemptuous snort. Prude. Are we moving on to Q? What on earth will she dredge up for Q? Beneath my questions is the sinister reminder of the body; someone died in that fire, and it’s only a matter of time before someone else realizes it wasn’t Zelda. Why would she risk that? And, perhaps most important: Whose bones are in the ashes of our barn?

  I flop over onto my belly and slurp a mouthful of warm white wine, nestling the plastic cup into the rocks. I let my eyes close, feeling the sun on my back. I remember long days on this beach, all four of us. If I squint into the sun, I can almost see me and Zelda there on the dock, tawny-limbed and ten. Our eyes are bloodshot and our shoulders a dangerous russet-pink, our black hair snarled and matted and curled moistly around our necks, plastered to the swath of freckles that erupt like rashes across the bridge of our noses whenever we spend time in the sun.

  —

  “Daddy, come play with us!” I watch as my ten-year-old self moans plaintively, fending off a new assault from Zelda as she shoves at my shoulder. “Daddy, please!” I beg—begged—as Marlon cracks open his eyes and sits up in his lounge chair, the muscles of his abdomen neatly folded. He’s wearing sunglasses, a panama hat, and his bathing suit. He looks at home in the sunlight, his Florida childhood glistening in the reflection of sweat on his temples. He sets down his drink. Nadine, ever the pale-skinned aristocrat, is shielded by an umbrella and a redundant sun hat.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Zelda chants, chanted, has always chanted, euphorically, affirming everything. We both shriek in hysterical giddiness as Marlon pauses dramatically, then tosses his sunglasses and hat aside and races over to the dock on the balls of his feet, his arms outstretched, lowering his center of gravity in preparation. Zelda and I dance to the end of the dock on excited tiptoes, screeching. Marlon collides with us, each of his arms snatching up a twin while he bellows something wordless and primal. We are both airborne, arcing messily into the water with a splash. I am laughing helplessly, and snort water into my nose as I attempt to resurface. I splutter back up, part
ly panicked and partly delirious. Marlon, still up on the dock, thumps loudly on his chest and makes King Kong noises of conquest.

  “I say foul, sir!” Zelda chastises loudly, already heading back to the dock, making good time with her hybrid paddle that is both doggy and breaststroke. She refuses to practice the official strokes; during our dawn swimming lessons at the Watkins Glen pool, she started cackling when our instructor demonstrated the butterfly, and from that moment she has stolidly eschewed any formal tuition in swimming. I have worked every summer to perfect the choppy speed of the crawl, the self-protecting calmness of the backstroke, the unflagging breaststroke, even the splashy and impractical butterfly. I am the youngest girl (person, in fact) in the advanced swim level, and I have been promised a job as an instructor when I turn thirteen. I cling to this assured future. My dives are picture-perfect, whereas Zelda flings herself recklessly off the diving board, not caring whether her skin smacks painfully into the water as a result of imperfect form. I’m too afraid of the slapping sting to experiment and rigidly repeat my method every time: right hand over left, chin tucked, belly back toward spine, big toes pointed and in contact with each other.

  “I feel that’s quite enough screeching,” Nadine says from her beachfront perch. She doesn’t have to raise her voice for us to hear her clearly. The three of us are all perfectly tuned to her frequency, listening for any hints or indications of whether an eruption is imminent. The peak of her umbrella is a glowering, ominous Pompeii, lurking on the periphery of our sun-drenched city.

  We quiet down momentarily, and Nadine flips through the glossy pages of her architecture and design magazine, staring at beautiful homes and wondering absently when (whether? No, when) her own home will appear amid these paragons of bourgeois achievement. She sighs and sips daintily from her oversized gin and tonic, already worrying about what will happen when it is depleted below the halfway mark. It is early in the day, and she doesn’t yet drink the way she will after Marlon leaves. For now, the pretense of a healthy relationship with alcohol is still intact.

  Our cries of joy are only temporarily stifled, though, and soon we’re squawking again. We are caught up in the frantic joy of play. The giddy desire to win but also the need to keep the game going indefinitely, regardless of the winner. To disregard the rules, heaving them to the side in order to prolong the suspense.

  “I say, I say, this is a travesty,” Zelda giggles as, back on the dock, she tries to get leverage against Marlon’s hip bone. He deftly skips away just as she attempts to reinforce her position and lunges at him with the full weight of her body. Her hands slide off his wet midriff, her balance is shot, and she collapses into the drink. Her head pops up immediately. “You are an imitable cad, Mr. Marlon!” she calls out. She has been obsessed with anything concerning the Civil War for the last two months. She is entranced by this history of division, a separation that could have taken place but didn’t. She is prefiguring our parents’ divorce, exploring our eternal union. And talking in the most ridiculous southern belle dialect. It’s driving us all insane.

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s correct,” Marlon booms. “But I’m afraid that I’m”—he picks me up—“the sovereign leader”—he dangles me out over the water as my feet scrabble for the wood, my fingers grab for his arms, and I giggle in terror—“of this here territory!” He drops me summarily into the water. “The Yankees win again!” he crows.

  “Jesus, Marlon,” Nadine snipes from the shore. “You’re the adult. Someone’s going to get hurt.” We ignore her.

  “But you’re not a Yankee, Daddy!” I correct. “You’d be a Confederate! Because you’re from Florida.”

  “Geographically speaking, I would be,” Marlon says. “But not in my heart of hearts.” He seats himself on the edge of the dock, his legs dangling into the water as Zelda and I circle him; we are scheming little mermaids.

  “I’d be a Rebel,” Zelda declares.

  “Racist,” I inform her.

  “That has nothing to do with it, idiot,” she responds, splashing me. “It’s about federal centralization.”

  “Racist,” I repeat.

  “Are you going to prevent the second Civil War, darling, or do I need to get involved?” Nadine threatens from beneath the shelter of her pin-striped beach umbrella.

  “Let’s both try and get Daddy in the water,” Zelda says to me. I miss the undertone of her voice, fail to recognize the sound of her plotting.

  “Now, I know neither one of you is thinking about pulling on my toes underwater. How absolutely just awful that would be. I know that it hasn’t even crossed your minds to try and get me off the dock….” Marlon baits us innocently. I giggle mischievously and paddle down to his toes, pretending that I’m a big fish taking the bait of his white digits. From beneath the water, I can hear him howling in exaggerated horror.

  “Oh, God, some fish has my toes!” My knees thrash out and I encounter Zelda’s thigh, and she kicks back at me. When I surface for breath, I realize she’s trying to tug Marlon off the dock by towing on his calf. Though it’s clearly obvious this won’t work, I join her and we churn our feet, pulling on our father. “Oh, here I go! Crap, I’m going to fall in!” Marlon protests, subtly heaving himself into the water. We cry out in triumph and swarm around him, starved sharks in a feeding frenzy of parental attention. I cling to his arm joyously, swollen with victory. Now everything is perfect! This is all I wanted. But Zelda has not forgotten the purpose of the game: to win control of the dock. She knew that I would be content with this small conquest, hanging on Marlon’s arm and distracted by affection. She has dashed up onto the planking and crows the success of her coup.

  “We can’t stand for that, can we, Little A?” Marlon asks me conspiratorially. “You ready?”

  I nod feverishly, my eyes and nose burning from a day spent largely underwater, and prepare myself to be launched back toward the dock. I put my foot into the clasp of Marlon’s hands and he propels me up and through the water. I picture myself landing on the dock fully upright to challenge Zelda, but I’ve misunderstood the intended trajectory of Marlon’s launch; he seems to have imagined me covering a couple feet of water, splashing in, and then hoisting myself up. I realize too late that I am fully unprepared to reenter the water, that my head is angled all wrong, my hands outstretched. Time slows down as I fly toward the dock and collide into it, crashing back beneath the water.

  When I come up, I’m wailing. Not just because I’m hurt, though I am, but because my dramatic attempt to retake the lost territory has been so indecorously thwarted. A military disgrace. I’ve smacked my ribs and swallowed water, and the raw burning sensation makes my eyes leak. It’s hard to cry and tread water.

  “What did I say?” Nadine asks calmly, not lifting her eyes from her magazine. “Someone always ends up crying in your games, Marlon.”

  Our father doesn’t give any sign of having heard her, though he does collect me sympathetically. “C’mon, let’s get out of the water, Little A,” he soothes.

  “Nooo!” I wail. “I want to keep playing!”

  “Maybe in a bit.”

  “I guess I win,” Zelda says, smug, her hands on her hips.

  “No, you don’t!” I spit out. “The game’s not over.”

  “You lose,” she taunts. “I’m Queen of the Dock.”

  “Zaza, don’t tease Ava,” Marlon says.

  “What? I got hurt too. At least I didn’t cry like a ba-by,” she chants.

  “Ava, c’mon,” Marlon says, dragging me toward the beach. I’m thrashing uncooperatively, desperate to stay in the water.

  “Look at my splinter, Dad,” Zelda says proudly, acrobatically extending her entire leg to show him the sole of her foot. There is indeed an impressive splinter lodged in the ball of her foot, already pulsing red. She displays it to compare our relative toughness, a competition I have also just lost by falling apart in the water. Not only has she won the dock, she withstands pain better too. I slink back to shore in humiliated defeat.
And Zelda, though gleefully victorious, limps back to where I sit sniffling on the rocks. Marlon and Nadine bicker beneath the umbrella. (“You’re a child.” “And you’re a shrew.”) Zelda sidles up to me and leans against my shoulder.

  “We can rule jointly,” she says. “Two rulers are better than one.”

  I snivel at her, not wanting to accept but knowing I will.

  “Okay,” I finally say. She tugs me by the hand back toward the dock, away from our parents and their disagreement. We sit on the edge, toes dabbling in the lake’s surface, and decide on the rules for our kingdom. Zelda appoints me Lady of the Lake, an honorary position.

  —

  Looking at my father now, stretched out on the beach, I wonder if Marlon is also remembering those games, if he recalls the feel of our slippery brown torsos as he flung us into the water, shrieking with pleasure. I wonder if he plays the same games with his other daughters, if he takes them to the pool and launches them by the feet into a half-airborne dive, over and over again until their eyes are tight with too much sun and water. If he laughs raucously and romps like a child himself when he is with them. If he ignores his wife as she sits unhappily nearby, if he lets her fester in her despair and averts his eyes whenever she tries to signal her need for help. Does Maria try to tell him how miserable she has become, in the only inadequate language she has at her disposal? Do his daughters pretend it’s not happening, putting on a performance of their happiness, hoping to detract from the desperate gloom that settles over them every time they’re together? I look over at Marlon, trying, not for the first time, to divine what might be going on behind his relaxed and unconcerned façade, delicately cracking at the edges but firmly, implacably maintained. Surely he can’t really be so indifferent.

  Nearly dry, I stand up and wrap the sarong around my waist. Then I squat to top up my plastic cup.