There it is. First pseudospiritual Eastern religious mumbo jumbo of the night. I know what’s coming next.
“These are hard lessons, Ava, but they’re part of your solar arc. I looked at your chart and your sister’s, and I’d be really happy to talk to you sometime about what I intuited there. You might find it useful.” She must be stoned, if she’s headed straight for the astrology. Or maybe Zelda talked about it with her.
I nod, trying to indicate my lack of interest. “Yeah, okay, Dora. Thanks.”
“Is your dad around?” Steve asks, too casually, and I frantically try to remember if they had some sort of unpleasant interaction before Marlon split. Does Marlon owe him money? I can’t remember. Seems like he left unpaid debts all over town.
“Yeah, he flew in from California. Brought his mother,” I add, with a bitter sip of beer. It’s raw and hoppy-tasting, but I actually kind of like it. I sense its great potential for getting one tanked.
“Oh, that must be nice. To have some help with Nadine,” Dora says. I nod.
“Listen, guys, it’s been a really long day,” Wyatt says, clearing his throat. “Ava is gonna crash here tonight, if that’s cool. Her house is a bit of a zoo right now.”
“Of course, whatever you need. There’s leftover spaghetti, if you’re hungry,” Dora says.
“And plenty more beer in the fridge. Help yourself,” Steve adds, obliviously earning himself another nervous squint from Dora.
“ ’Night, guys,” Wyatt says as they bustle toward the stairs, taking their dismissal very graciously. Steve flips off the sound system on his way out of the room. The Darlings are very serious about energy conservation.
“G’night!” I call, flopping down on the couch with my beer. I try not make eye contact but instead lap the hoppy dregs of beer with my tongue. I pluck the remnants of a joint from the ashtray and light up, not waiting to be invited.
“Ava,” Wyatt begins softly, coming to sit beside me. I can hear that it’s his serious voice, that he’s about to say something Important. I try to look attentive. “I just. I wanted to say. I’m sorry. About the whole—thing—with your sister. I shouldn’t have.”
“She shouldn’t have.”
“It wasn’t—we were both just so angry at you.”
“I know,” I sigh. It’s not that I’m not pissed and hurt about that still. That it didn’t feel catastrophic at the time. It’s more that as it was happening, in almost the same breath that was knocked out of me when I found out about them, I realized that they had given me an escape route that I had subconsciously desired. With that betrayal, I finally had a good reason to go; I could really commit to abandonment. After having done everything I was supposed to do, playing by the rules all these years, I could just walk off. I’d been an overachiever, a plays-well-with-others kid, a high school honor society role model, a star student at an Ivy League college, planning to go into a sensible and necessary vocation; I’d been take-over-the-family-business upright-citizen material my whole life. I’d done what I was told, colored impeccably between the lines. This transgression of Zelda’s and Wyatt’s should have meant I could go be senseless and frivolous. Go read books and faff around Europe and be silly, reckless. But, of course, I didn’t leave immediately. I had transgressions of my own to make.
Their betrayal alone would not have been enough to dislodge me from Silenus.
“It’s what happened afterward, of course,” I say casually. “After I found out about you two.” Wyatt looks at me in alarm. We’ve never spoken about it, obviously. “I think I knew I was going to leave after the first glimpse of you together, Zelda squirming away on top of you, your toes curled in ecstasy.” He flinches. “That was the end. But it was that night a week later that meant I had to leave. Completed the ritual.”
“Look, Ava, we’d all been drinking, we were all upset, it wasn’t…”
“You think so?” I stare at him, my eyes dark and cruel. “We all had our reasons—the whiskey just helped us along. If it hadn’t happened, I never would have had the courage to walk away. Zelda would never have felt like she’d mastered us both. And you…you wanted to have both of us, didn’t you? To not have to choose, for just one night?”
His silence is the answer.
“Is there more to say about it, Ava?” Wyatt finally asks, his voice full of pain and shame. I sip my beer and lock eyes with him. “Should we—do you want to talk about it?”
“No. I really don’t.” I set my beer on the coffee table, put the roach back in the ashtray, and raise myself up onto my knees. I reach around and free my zipper, then tug my dress over my head. I can see the outlines of my body in the reflection of the black window, the glare of my white underthings stark in the dim glass. I lean across his body, stretching my whole self out across the planes of his chest and stomach. I can’t undo what happened before. Either I can never see him again or I can let it go. “Absolutely no more talking. We’re done with that.”
21
Upstairs, I wake in Wyatt’s bed. I’m wearing only my bra and underwear, and, fuzzily, I remember him hoisting me off the couch and carrying me up to bed. I’m grateful not to be on display in the living room, where, after several more beers, I fell asleep tangled up in a scratchy hand-knit blanket and Wyatt’s long arms. Usually, when quaffing flask after decanter after pitcher of jammy, noxious booze, I later weep veritable flagons of remorse. But not today. I yawn and stretch out, flopping over onto my back in this strange bed. We didn’t spend much time here back when we were together, largely due to his parents’ disapproval, as well as to the fact that from the age of about fourteen, my house was a free-for-all. His sheets are clean and smell like they were recently hanging outside on a clothesline, and I inhale the scent of his pillow deeply. I actually feel good. Downstairs, I can hear rustlings and morning conversation, and I imagine the smell of coffee.
I reach for my rumpled dress, which Wyatt has hung over the rail of the bed; I smile at the small, thoughtful gesture. Humming softly, I make the bed, fluff the pillows, open the window to let in some fresh air, and head downstairs.
Dora and Steve are sitting at the kitchen table, and Wyatt is pouring coffee at the kitchen counter. “Muffin?” he says around a mouthful of something, crossing the kitchen to hand me a mug.
“Yes yes yes.” I nod. “Morning, Dora, Steve.”
Steve smiles at me from behind a newspaper, and Dora waves absently, not looking up from her book. Cool indifference is much better than the scrutiny I’m used to receiving from them, and I smirk at Wyatt. He hands me a blueberry muffin still warm from the oven.
“Come see the new deck. It wasn’t here the last time you were.” He gestures toward the glass door.
“If you’re quiet, maybe you’ll see a hummingbird,” Steve suggests. “Since I installed the feeder, they come almost every day. Funny little things.”
It’s a bright day, and the lawn smells clean, freshly mowed. A huge bush of red flowers is in full bloom just off the side of the new deck, scented like expensive cocktails.
“Nice,” I say, checking out the new surface in the backyard. Shaded by a big maple and looking out on the pine grove, the deck is indeed very relaxing. I sink into one of the Adirondack chairs and sip my coffee happily. It is nice to pretend that things are normal, that we’re just having a lazy breakfast at his parents’ house, that the last five or so years haven’t actually taken place, that Zelda isn’t…Zelda.
“So, about yesterday,” Wyatt says, as though wishing to dispel the quiet easiness of the day. I stare pointedly at the trees, scanning for hummingbirds, even though I know that you usually hear them before you see them. “What happened at the police station? Was it just shock that made you laugh like that?”
“I’m sure that was a factor. But it was more…of a realization. A little epiphany.” Wyatt waits patiently for me to go on. “That she’s going to go through with this. That she’s serious.”
“About?”
“She’s going whole hog
. She’s faking her own death, not just playing around, getting everyone riled up. The coroner, Dr. Whitcross? That’s the doctor she’s been bangin’ for the last few months. That’s how she’s dealing with the dental records and the death certificate.”
“You think she bribed him?”
“My guess would be blackmail, frankly. The guy is probably married. She takes a couple pictures of him doing lines off her and her twenty-something-year-old girlfriend, and that takes care of the medical evidence. The life insurance money comes through, the debt mostly goes away, and voilà!” I snap my fingers in illustration. “She gets a clean start.”
Wyatt weighs what I’ve just suggested, staring mutely at the flowers and mulling it over.
“Where is she going to go? She won’t have an identity. She’ll have to live in the woods or something,” he says after a pause, baffled.
“Or I will.”
“Wait, what?” Wyatt pauses thoughtfully. “What do you mean?”
“I think Zelda is heading to the City of Light. Paris.”
Wyatt’s eyebrows shoot up. “Shit. You think she would?”
“Yeah, I kinda do. She could just take my passport and go. I’d be stuck here, unless I reported it stolen, got a new one. And by then she could have already disappeared into Europe, with a head start. I think she might already be there. My boyfriend”—we both flinch at the word—“is convinced he saw me at my favorite café. When he went to go talk to me, I apparently got up and took off before he could say anything. I have a hunch she’s already taken my passport and left.”
Wyatt looks ashen. “Have you checked?”
“Not yet. That’s next.”
“Jesus. But why? Because of the debt?”
“That. And maybe health insurance. She’s convinced she’s got what Mom does, and here in America she’s stuck on Medicaid, which will hardly cover a thing. Not ideal for a lengthy, degenerative illness. She figures if she gets to France, or anywhere with socialized medicine, she’ll be fine. She can buy a forged passport to replace mine, and she’ll be set.”
“What about money?”
“That’s trickier. She has to wait for the insurance to clear. I think she’ll come clean with me then, and she’ll ask me for the money. Probably split it with me.”
“Why would you give it to her, after she’s stolen your identity and fled the country?”
“I’m not sure, but I am a little concerned,” I say. “She’ll want to have leverage, in case she can’t just talk me into it. Probably debt in my name, credit cards from a French bank or something. At least that’s what I’d do. Though being Zelda, she’ll probably think up something even more compelling. A terrifying thought.” I shrug. I’ve been going over it in my mind, trying to get one step ahead of her, thinking of what the rest of the letters might be. I feel pretty sure I’ll figure it out only when she wants me to, but I’d be a fool not to try to protect myself.
“And you came up with this hypothesis last night?”
“When I heard that Whitcross was the coroner. It clicked. Up until these dental records, I was sure it was going to be one of her games. That she’d pop up after a week with a ‘Surprise!’ Laughing at her own cleverness.” I shake my head. “But now she’s committed. She’s legally dead, and if the truth about who’s in that fire ever surfaces, she’ll probably be wanted for murder too.”
“Fuck,” Wyatt swears softly, shaking his head. “I thought she was just screwing with us. You, mostly. I’m not sure she ever really cared enough to screw with me.” A note of bitterness is audible in his tone. I can’t help feeling a similar surge of frustration. How dare he love her, after everything? How could he not?
“I did too. But our little Zelda is growing up.”
“What do we do?” he asks helplessly. “Go to the cops?”
“Would you believe us? I have a couple of emails and an elaborate theory. They have a body, forensic evidence, a murder suspect already in jail, and a case that’s pretty well closed.”
“Still, we could check with the airlines, see if anybody using your passport has traveled overseas in the last few days, check the border. That would be proof.”
“Proof that someone has my passport, not that Zelda does.”
“Seriously? Only someone identical to you could travel with it.”
“Or change the picture, sell it to professional forgers. It would be suggestive, not conclusive.” I shake my head.
Wyatt is silent for a moment, looking at me. “You don’t want her to get caught,” he finally says in disbelief. “Holy shit. You’re still on her side.”
I balk. “It’s not that—”
“You’re protecting her!”
“She’s my twin sister! No, I don’t want Interpol to track her down and arrest her for murder and fraud and God knows what else.”
“That’s what she’s counting on! She’s counting on you never telling her that this shit is too far, too much! She’s fucking manipulating you, Ava. She always has.”
“I know that, Wyatt. I’m not an idiot. But what can I do?” I shrug helplessly. I want Wyatt to think that my loyalty to Zelda is what prevents me from turning over everything I’ve got to the cops. But that’s not exactly it. Not entirely. What I want is to get to the end of the alphabet, the end of Zelda’s story. I want to know the ending, and I’m willing to suspend sensible decision making to reach it. My narrative desire is greater than my need to see her stopped.
Wyatt stares off the deck, leaning on his knees. He’s clearly not happy with me. “Ava. There’s something I need to say, and I’m going to just come out with it.” He pauses. Looking down. “Your idea of yourself—and of Zelda—I think sometimes you get it wrong. This whole dividing-up-the-world thing that you’ve always done, I mean, do you think maybe you’re sometimes just, well, off?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like you don’t want to compete for space. So Zelda is the bad, wild twin. And you’re the good one. And you have these ideas of who you are that fit into those boxes. But do you ever think that maybe it’s not that simple?”
I consider what he’s said, and I know there might be some truth there. But those boundaries are so important, so necessary, that I can’t let them be fictions. Right now, they need to be real.
“I’ll think about it,” I say. I don’t know if he believes me, but he leans forward on his elbows, staring off into the trees. “Wy.” He meets my eyes. “Zaza said you loved me because of my vulnerability. Is that—I mean…”
Wyatt smiles. “Ava Antipova, are you asking me why I love you?”
I turn pink and glance at him bashfully. “Maybe.” What I’m asking might more accurately be: Why do you love me and not my sister?
“Your vulnerability might be part of it, I guess,” he admits.
“Really?” I find this disappointing. “I guess I don’t think of myself as very vulnerable.”
“Well, exactly. You’re tough as nails and you take exactly no shit from anyone. But beneath that, you’re full of love and affection. You care so deeply about the people you love, and getting a glimpse of that loyalty, that fierceness is…well, a privilege. And if you feel even for a second that that love might be directed at you, well…”
“I guess I don’t really see it that way.”
“Because you’re so tough and perfect and, like, together, all the time! That’s what makes it so powerful to see when you actually, honestly feel something. Like I’m being allowed into a tiny private universe. Most people are an open book, but not you.”
“Zelda isn’t either.”
“No, but she’ll always let you know if she’s angry, or hurt, or jealous, or pleased. She’s just more…demonstrative. With you, the first time you told me you loved me was this, like, revelatory experience. I literally felt like I’d won the lottery or something. Struck by lightning.” He gives me one of his sweet, slow smiles.
“You remember that day?”
“Ava, it is etched in my memory
forever. You wore a blue dress, and I’d never seen you so tongue-tied in my life. It looked like it physically pained you to tell me.”
I can’t help laughing at the memory. “I was rather uncomfortable, yeah.”
“The lilacs were in bloom, it was full spring….”
“Christ, what a romantic,” I groan.
“I don’t know if I’d ever been so happy.”
“Well. It needed to be said.” I, too, remembered that day vividly. We were on the back deck, and the long winter had finally loosened its grip. The frozen edges of the lake had thawed; the lawn was green. For months, I had seen Wyatt’s skin only in bed, warm and protected beneath the sheets, and out there, as he sat in shorts and a T-shirt, his chalky flesh seemed unprotected, exposed. I felt nearly as naked. I was so young, and scared, and happy. The raw relief of spring made me brave. I don’t know if I’m now capable of feeling so limitless. Or so afraid.
We sit quietly, and I’m unsure of what else to say. We are in dangerous territory; we could reminisce, savoring these memories of when it was good. Get lost in what it was like to be young and stupid in love. But that would overwrite how things became, and how we left them.
“Look. A hummingbird,” Wyatt finally says, pointing toward the red bush. I squint, looking for the telltale colorful blur. After a moment, I see it, buzzing from one blossom to another.
“There are two.” I point to a companion a couple of feet away. “A pair.” We watch them quietly.
“Are we making a mistake, Ava?”
“We won’t know for a little longer,” I say, patting his knee. At the sudden sound, the birds flit away, disappearing into the shadow of the pine trees.
“So what do we do next?”
“Solve the puzzle,” I answer, leaning back in my chair. “Her last note said that I was holding the answer in my hand. She must have meant that the answer was in the letter. How did she put it? Something about how underneath something or other we conceal our missing pieces?”
Dead Letters Page 27
