Dead Letters

by Caite Dolan-Leach

  “I don’t know how you can live with all this, Ava,” Wyatt says. He strokes my hair. “You’re incredible.”

  “I’ve had a lifetime of practice.” I untangle myself from him and open the door to the tasting room cellar with my key, inhaling the pleasant scent of our cave: grapy and woody and musty all at once. I point out the wine that Marlon wants to use, and Wyatt dutifully lifts two cases of the Chardonnay while I struggle with one box of the red blend. I have no idea how many people we’re expecting, but three cases seems bountiful, at least for now.

  By the time we make it up the stairs into the tasting room, I’m panting, and a vein in my head is throbbing. My sweat has an unhealthy smell, and I wonder if I should change my dress. Wyatt and I unpack the bottles of white and plunge them into an ice bath. My mouth waters as I handle the cool glass, and I’m extremely tempted to open a bottle right now.

  “Is it too early for a glass?” Wyatt asks, half-kidding, and I chuckle.

  “Was just thinking exactly that. I still have to set up and herd people over here, so I suppose it’s too early for me. But help yourself.”

  “I’ll wait for a civilized moment,” Wyatt says. I hear footsteps on the deck; Dora and Steve bustle in with armfuls of fabric spilling out of boxes.

  “God, it’s been so long since we were here!” Dora exclaims. “It’s so effing pretty.”

  “Totally,” Steve agrees, sounding happily stoned.

  “Yeah, shame my family is crawling all over it,” I reply. “Otherwise it would be lovely.”

  Tactfully ignoring what I’ve just said, the Darlings begin unpacking tablecloths and vases. It seems outrageous to make the space appear festive, but once we’ve arranged everything, it does look like we’re going to have a party. Zelda would appreciate it. I dispatch Dora back to the big house for the speakers and send Steve to pick some wildflower posies for the empty vases. Wyatt opens bottles for a few minutes, and I fuss distractedly, though I can’t stop staring at the road, waiting for Marlon’s rented convertible to swing into the drive. Wyatt comes over and grabs my hands; I’ve been shredding a stray doily into little paper snowflakes.

  “I know this is awful,” he says soothingly. “You, having to enact this…whatever it is. Pretend this game is real. Zelda’s put you in a shitty situation.”

  “Yes, yes, she has.” I shake my hands, trying to dispel my physical tension. “Is it crazy that I feel something like stage fright? I’m really fucking anxious,” I admit.

  “No. You’re performing, after all.”

  I nod. “I think Marlon booked,” I say weakly.

  “Really? He’s not here?” Wyatt stiffens and looks toward the window, as though Marlon will be in sight.

  “Left this morning. I think he bailed.”

  “Shit. That asshole!” Wyatt looks murderous. I could kiss him. I do.

  “C’est la vie,” I say lightly. “We’ll just get through this afternoon.”

  “I’m here, Ava. I’m not going anywhere,” he murmurs.

  Dora and Steve come back with both sound equipment and floral arrangements moments later, and we bustle around, adding our finishing touches. A car pulls into the driveway as we’re testing out the music, and I swallow hard. Here we go.

  “I’ll be right back. I’ve gotta go collect Nadine and Opal. And change my dress,” I add with a delicate sniff.

  Wyatt nods. “I’ll hold down the fort.”

  I pour myself a serious slug of wine and toss it back medicinally. Then I dash over toward the house to usher Nadine and Opal over, only to find that Opal is already tugging Nadine across the lawn. They look like two frail old ladies, not women from two different generations. Nadine has a contemptuous and stubborn expression on her face, but Opal won’t be deterred. She refuses to slow down as they make their way along the dirt path. I catch up to them and seize my mother’s other arm. She doesn’t acknowledge me.

  “No wheelchair?” I ask, miffed.

  “She wouldn’t get in, and I saw the car pull up. So we made a deal,” Opal says stiffly.

  I don’t inquire about the details; I can guess that it involved bribery and threats. That is, after all, the method Nadine is most familiar with, whether she’s doling out or receiving. Opal is surprisingly spry as they trek along the trail. Another car pulls into the tasting room parking lot, and I dash for my room.

  I start tearing off my dress as I climb the stairs, struggling with the zipper and finally just yanking the garment over my head in frustration. Then I crouch in front of my suitcase in my underwear, rifling through it for something quick and easy. There’s a pretty green dress that isn’t quite right for a funeral, but at least it doesn’t reek of wine-soaked sweat. As I pull it free, something blue falls to the floor.

  I reach over and pick up my passport.

  I freeze, staring down at it. Slowly, I open it and look at my own name inside. My passport, not Zelda’s. I toss it onto my bed and tug the dress on. I feel spinny, and it’s not because of the pills. Only I can’t think about this new development right now. Later. If I think about it right now, I won’t make it through this charade. I run back over to the tasting room as more cars turn into the driveway. Country people are punctual.

  Inside, Nadine has been installed in a chair near the corner of the room. Wyatt is handing her a glass of wine. She sips it, pacified, though she doesn’t acknowledge Wyatt. Opal has settled in by the door, where she can play the matriarch and personally greet everyone who enters. I cross the room and grab Wyatt firmly by the arm, wondering at the impropriety of this gesture; many of the people who come today will know about his relationship with Zelda, and there’s something indecorous, if not downright trashy, about me reclaiming him, here and now. But I’m not sure I give a shit.

  “I found my passport,” I hiss.

  He looks at me in guppy-faced surprise. “But then…?” he says.

  I shake my head cluelessly. I don’t know. Something feels wrong, and I have started trembling. People are filtering into the room, and soon there’s a small crowd milling awkwardly around, everyone speaking in hushed tones. A few people step out onto the deck, then immediately retreat inside, and I realize that the barn is fully visible from outside. I refill my glass and top Nadine’s off before greeting a few people I knew in high school. One of our high school teachers arrives, and when I overhear what she’s saying, I realize she’s confused me with Zelda; that is, she thinks that Zelda was the good student who submitted insightful papers on time, and she’s under the impression that I am the frequently stoned wild card who once gave a presentation on the invention of the dental dam. She looks at me nervously, as though I’m about to attempt a similar feat today. I don’t have the heart to interrupt her rhapsodies and inform her that I am, in fact, the model student who wrote such a comprehensive report on the more or less local treasure The Last of the Mohicans and that she has been defaming the dead with her offhand comments about “my” unseemly behavior.

  I see Mr. Bartoletti across the room and scuttle away from him, a knot of dread forming in my stomach. Whatever else happens, we still owe him a large check.

  A handful of people try to talk to my mother, either out of respect or because they don’t realize how demented she really is these days. While she was never the most gracious of socializers, it’s apparent that Nadine has achieved new levels of disregard, and even those who were used to her former bitchiness are taken aback by her lack of any response whatsoever. I should probably intercede, but I don’t want to. It occurs to me again that if Zelda’s not in France, she could show up here at any moment, and my hands shake, sloshing my wine.

  As twelve-fifteen approaches, my nervousness starts to escalate into panic. Marlon has flown the coop, and he was the only one who prepared anything to say at this shindig. He had a poem or two, a few nice words, a picture that he was supposed to display somewhere. He’s our emcee. I could chuck Opal under the bus and ask her to speak a few words. Maybe I should cue up our Zelda playlist now, to buy
time.

  Instead, I open my mouth and welcome everyone. I feel detached. It’s like I’m in one of those dreams where you’re giving a presentation, or reciting lines or speaking in public, and you realize you have no idea what you’ve been saying and even less idea what you’re going to say next: the sensation that words are nonsense but you are expected to keep producing them in front of your audience. I mumble my way through a thank-you and an invitation to drink wine—

  “—as much as you like, really, who knows how long we’ll all be here, ha ha, today we’re serving our very special reserve Chardonnay from 2012, very oaky, and our Silenus red blend from 2008, cracking out the good stuff—” I take a gulp from my own glass and suck in a deep breath, trying to rein it in. I’m a terrible performer. As I’m speaking, the door swings open and in steps a skinny girl with tight, springy curls and a strong resemblance to Kyle Richardson. Kayla.

  My silence stretches on, extending beyond a short pause and into dead quiet as our guests shift nervously from foot to foot. I blink a few times, gulp some more wine, and wrap it up: “So, we’re going to be really informal today, just like Zelda would have wanted. I have a, um, playlist of some tunes, and we’ll just…take it from there.” I bob my head and dart toward the bar, which Kayla has sidled up to. I reach for her arm, squeezing her just above the elbow more firmly than I should. She squeaks, and her eyes widen when she sees my face.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” I demand.

  “Zelda?” she says, her mouth unattractively agape.

  “No, you ninny. I have no idea where Zelda is. But I think you do.” I angle her toward the stairs to the cellar. “Go down that staircase and wait for me at the bottom,” I hiss. “I’ll be there in a second. Don’t you dare fucking go anywhere.” People are starting to look at us and murmur. I paste on a smile and head to the speaker setup, where I cue the playlist that I lifted from Zelda’s phone. It occurs to me in a moment of horror that I should have listened all the way through it, in case Zelda has embedded a surprise for all of us near the end. Too late now. I dart down the stairs into the wine cellar before anyone can offer me more condolences. Wyatt is watching me in concern.

  Kayla is standing at the foot of the stairs, looking around uncertainly. She seems nervous; she’s scratching her arms and rocking back and forth.

  “What the fuck is going on, Kayla?” I ask.

  “Look, I really don’t know. Your sister is nuts. I mean, fabulously nuts. I was totally in love with her, but she’s gotten pretty…weird these last few months.” Kayla fidgets with her bag. “Listen, do you think I could have some of that?” She points to my wineglass. “I’m trying to get clean, but I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin.”

  I hand her the last swallow in my glass and reach for another bottle. We don’t have a corkscrew handy, so I grab one of the sparkling wines; it’s what we were supposed to be drinking anyway. It fizzes spectacularly when I crack it open, too warm to gently burble as it’s meant to. Or we fucked up the fermentation process. I can’t remember if this is one of the naturally fermented French-style bottles or the variety where the carbonation gets added post-ferment. Of course, it genuinely does not matter. Stop chattering, Ava. Pull it together. Once Kayla takes a sip, she seems to calm down.

  “Okay. So what’s the story?” I prod.

  “I—okay, look, don’t get mad, I only did what Zelda asked. She said you’d understand.”

  “Okay.” I grit my teeth.

  “You know she and I were, like, together?” she asks. I nod. “Not, like, together together, just sometimes, on and off. She was just so strange and mysterious, and then we were hanging with Jason a lot, and the drugs. It was sort of, like, a mini Bohemia or whatever. Totally wild, but, like, good.” Kayla takes a deep breath. “But for, like, six months, she’s been totally bonkers. She’ll be crazy busy and excited about something, then she won’t even speak to me for two weeks. The drugs were getting kind of bad, for all of us….”

  “And?”

  “Listen, you have to promise you’re not going to turn me in or anything. Zelda promised you were cool.”

  “I promise, Kayla.”

  “We were selling a bit. Not a lot, just to, like, friends. But we were into Jason for some money, and he was getting all pushy about it. Zelda always acted like she didn’t have to worry about money, and when she showed me this place, I realized why. I mean, shit, look at it!” Kayla whistles. “But then she told me she was in debt like crazy, not just Jason, you know, and she told me everything about your mom. Anyway, she said she had to disappear for a while, and she had a plan to fix it.” Kayla accepts the bottle from me and tips a significant portion of its contents into her mouth, choking on the bubbles. Here at Silenus, we’d never quite managed to achieve the soft carbonation of a Prosecco or Champagne. Shame. Another failure. “She said I should keep quiet for a week, just to stay out of trouble, you know. Made me promise. And then she said that if everything went okay, there would be a funeral and I should come.”

  “Great. And?” I press.

  “Well, she gave me this, like, list? Of stuff to do, in a certain order? She said it would work best because of my job at the funeral home—I could grease the way. That’s the word she used. Grease.” She giggles. A few things fall into place with her revelation.

  “The dental records? Was that you?”

  “Well, not exactly. Zee said I should show you this, ’cuz you’d want to know the details. It’s a schedule that she wanted me to follow.” She pulls a rumpled piece of paper from her bag.

  NOTES FOR SWEET KAY:

  June 22, afternoon: Send in eulogy to newspaper using funeral home email address.

  June 24, 9:15 AM: Send a text to Holly with a reminder to post the photo we talked about, and make sure she tags me in it!

  June 24, afternoon, evening: Watch Ava (wear wig). When she heads to the strip club, send the text to Trent Roberts with Jason Reynolds’s whereabouts and a gentle poke, so that he’s riled.

  June 25, 8:30 AM: Ring the doorbell at the house and leave the envelope labeled “Open me” on the doorstep. Watch to confirm Ava gets it, but DO NOT GET SEEN!

  June 26, 8 AM: Dr. Whitcross does autopsies on Sundays, when he’s not at the practice. Be sure to deliver the dental records to the morgue before then, on Sunday morning. He may already have a copy, but we have to be sure! Be very vague if he asks why you have them, but make sure he has them when he starts the autopsy.

  June 26, 9:30 PM: Drive to Two Goats and leave the letter labeled “T” taped to the windshield of Wyatt’s truck while Ava is inside—she’ll leave at 10, when the bar closes.

  June 27 or 28: Watch Facebook for details about my memorial service. Show up about half an hour after it starts, go straight to Ava, and ask to speak to her alone. Give her the last letter, and leave her be while she reads it.

  Make sure not to answer any phone calls or texts, and stay in the yurt on the other side of the national forest. Don’t go into town, don’t get seen, and definitely don’t talk to your brother, the loudmouthed twat. Thanks a mil, sweet Kay! See you on the flip side.

  “So I did what she told me,” Kayla sighs as I finish skimming the precise document. “I guess I don’t know how to do anything else. That’s just how she is. When Zee says jump…”

  “You’re not the only one up in the air. Don’t worry.”

  “Wanna know what’s weird? I’m not. Worrying. Like, I still think it’s going to be fine. I trust that girl. Crazy, right?” Kayla smiles helplessly.

  “It might be.”

  “This is the last one,” she says, holding an envelope out to me. “I’m gonna go upstairs. She said to leave you be. She said you’d know where to find her, after you read it. And then you’d tell me what to do, where to meet her.”

  I nod blankly, the feeling of wrongness intensifying. Kayla snakes around me to climb the staircase, leaving the letter in my hand. A simple white envelope, addressed with the letter Y and a single line in Lati
n: Nihil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio.

  25

  Young, yoked, and yearning Ava,

  You yield yet? Are you tired of my yammering? Have you figured out yet what I have done? And, most pertinently: Why, why, why? Y is for (wh)y. Here you are, at the end, ready to know. Maybe you’ve begun to suspect what really happened out there in our yard. You realize that you’ve been overthinking this from the get-go. Too clever, sweet Ava, too willing to ascribe double meaning where there is none. Tell me (and be truthful): What was your first thought when you heard about the barn and my tragic immolation? Darling sister mine, I’m certain that it went something along the lines of “That’s exactly what Zelda would want.” And that’s where you should have stopped thinking. Because it is. Was.

  Do you remember when Momma started to get sick? The problem is that we don’t really know when that happened. We know when we started to really notice. When she would take hours to drive home from town and look shiftily away when we asked where she had been, because she had no idea and had been driving lost around the lake. When she would start screaming that we had stolen all of her things, that we had locked them up somewhere in secret storage and were going to sell them off. When we would find her passed out somewhere utterly bizarre and she would have no idea how she got there.

  But. She’d been passing out in unpredictable places since our childhood. How many times did we find her with a gin and tonic still propped upright in her floppy fingers? The absolute preoccupation of the drunk with protecting their next drink, even while unconscious. All those times she took the car and was gone for half a day, off drinking somewhere, or up to fuck knows what. Her deranged meltdowns that would end with accusations, paranoid ravings, sheer fury. Mom was never well, has never been well. We just started to notice it in her fifties.

  Do you think about that a lot, Ava? I know I have, these last two years, without you here. While I watch her get worse, while she rots slowly in this house she has come to loathe, surrounded by people she barely recognizes, clinging to the one thing that has always comforted her. Her sole port in the storm of her brain chemistry. I think about whether she has transmitted it, whether those same chemicals are lurking, nascent, in my brain, in our brains. I’ve been thinking maybe they’ve already kicked in. Maybe they’ve been there all along, just like with Nadine. The disease is degenerative, eroding more and more essential brain function with every month, every year. But who’s to say it only starts with diagnosis? Presumably it’s been there, waiting and chewing away at your good bits for years, if not decades, before you haul yourself in to some beleaguered medical professional, who looks at you with pity and hands you a brochure. It’s manageable, they say. Treatable. We can make you comfortable. Of course, that’s assuming you have money, health insurance, resources. A family that will take care of you and sit with you in your slow, unseemly decline.