Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frenchie Garcia

by Jenny Torres Sanchez

  Chapter 6

  That night at dinner, my parents are watching me.

  “What?” I ask them.

  “What? Nothing,” my mom says.

  My dad shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders. “Nothing.”

  “You guys are staring at me,” I say.

  Mom laughs. “What? We can’t look at you now?”

  I sigh. There’s been some tension in my house lately, and it all comes down to art school. See, my parents are real artsy kinds of people, not overly parental, but hell-bent on creativity and this notion of raising “a capable, independent individual who will contribute to society.” And since my mom is an artist and my dad is a musician of sorts (he has an office job but a room full of guitars he still plays), they hope my contribution will be an artistic one. It’s kind of like they want me to save the world, using art. No pressure or anything.

  My mom’s been planning my future as an artist from the moment she saw how long I could sit with a sketchbook in front of me. And most of this year, she’d urged me to finish the sample pieces I need for the application. And I did. She urged me to get my letters of recommendation. And I did. She reminded me to make sure I submitted everything before the deadline, which I also did. And everything should have worked out great. Except I didn’t get in. And it’s been the big giant elephant in the room ever since.

  “I was just wondering,” my mom says, peering around the elephant’s ass, “if you’ve been working on anything new lately?”

  They look at me, like quizzical birds, waiting for their little bird to say something.

  “Uh, no,” I say. I stare at my chicken and suddenly feel sorry for it. I push it around on my plate, trying to ignore the echos of a cluck.

  “Oh,” Mom says. She takes a few more bites, chews, swallows, and then speaks up again. “You should,” she says. She does this in a singsongy way meant to sound like she’s not nagging. “Maybe it would be good for you. It might inspire you a little. Especially if you’re going to reapply.”

  “Um, yeah . . . ,” I say. I don’t bother to tell her that I don’t care about getting into art school anymore. I keep staring at the chicken.

  Mom puts down her fork, which is always a bad sign. It means she’s so into whatever she’s about to say next, that she can’t be bothered with operating a utensil at the same time. “Frenchie,” she says.

  I put down my fork, too unable to eat any more of the chicken and push away my plate. I decide I’m a vegetarian from now on.

  “Frenchie,” Mom says again and waits until I look up. Her face softens. “It’s not the end of the world,” she says.

  I close my eyes and rub my forehead. “I know, Mom,” I tell her.

  “There’s always a second chance. There’s always next time.”

  Except when there isn’t. There’s not always a second chance.

  I nod.

  “Your mom is right,” Dad says as he cuts his chicken. The knife scrapes the plate, and then he pops the piece into his mouth. I feel sick.

  Mom gets up and walks over to her purse. She pulls out her wallet.

  “Here,” she says, handing me a credit card. “Please, just go to the supply store and get some things. You’ll see. Once you smell the oil of the paint and turpentine and pencils, once you see the blank canvas, you’ll get inspired.”

  “Mom.” I groan because I really don’t want to go. How can I explain to her that I already tried. That I’ve been to the art supply store several times. And every time I walk in, the smell makes me panic. The blank canvas makes me anxious. The weight of everything in that store closes in on me and makes me never want to pick up a paintbrush again.

  “French, just go,” she says. The softness in her voice from a moment ago is gone and replaced with a stern tone. I know this tone. It means she’s lost her patience with me.

  “Fine,” I say, because I don’t have the energy to sit here and argue with her. She stands there, holding the credit card.

  “What?” I ask. “You mean now?”

  “Right now.”

  I look over at Dad who just shrugs, but then says, “You’d better go,” in a way that means he’s siding with Mom.

  I push back my chair and grab the card from Mom’s hand. “This is so stupid,” I say.

  “I’ll be anxious to see what you get,” she says. I give her a dirty look and grab my keys off the counter.

  “And Frenchie,” she calls as I open the front door. “Remember, we love you.”

  I slam the door extra hard, no doubt leaving them to discuss all the possibilities for what is basically just a bleak and uncertain future.

  I curse myself for not pulling a Van Gogh by cutting off an ear, wrapping it in a fake acceptance letter, and presenting it to my parents.

  I have the distinct feeling it would have been less painful than what I face now—forcing something that I just don’t have.

  Chapter 7

  I start driving. But instead of going to the art supply store, I speed to the end of my block and come to an abrupt stop in front of the cemetery. I get out of my car and cross through the familiar gates. For a moment, I actually consider going over to Andy. I want to. But I can’t. Instead I cut over to Em’s grave, reciting some old familiar lines to the beat of my steps.

  I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

  And Mourners to and fro

  Kept treading—treading—till it seemed

  That Sense was breaking through—

  And when they all were seated,

  A Service, like a Drum—

  Kept beating—beating—till I thought

  My Mind was going numb—

  And when I heard them lift a Box

  And creak across my Soul

  With those same Boots of Lead, again,

  Then Space—began to toll,

  As all the Heavens were a Bell,

  And Being, but an Ear,

  And I, and Silence, some strange Race

  Wrecked, solitary, here—

  This poem I’ve memorized. There’s nobody around to hear me, and I find comfort in the way Em’s poems sound. They do this kind of halting thing at the end of some lines. It’s like you expect them to rhyme, to keep going smooth and seamless, but they don’t. And in a weird way they do . . . in an awkward kind of way. Slant rhyme bothers the shit out of some people, but I like it. If I were a poem, I’d probably be in slant.

  I look at Em’s grave.

  “You get it,” I tell her, because she’s the only one who does. I see the world going on around me, but I’m stuck. And the monotony of every day is like that steady drum, just beating, beating, beating, while each day passes.

  “I feel that steady beat in my head, Em. I march through my days like those mourners, but I feel like I’m in that box, too. There’s a funeral in my brain. How do I make it stop?”

  But she doesn’t have any suggestions so I say the poem again, consoled only by the fact that she understands me. Maybe because she completely cut herself off from the rest of the world. I wish I could do the same. I wish I could go in my room and never be bothered again.

  I hear the last lines echo with the steady march.

  Wrecked, solitary, here.

  There’s something sad but immensely appealing about it.

  I look across the cemetery and notice that Mr. Nice Old Man is here, in the newer part of the cemetery. Nice Old Man is a nice old man who has been coming to the cemetery every weekend for the last year. He’s always dressed in a suit and bow tie and brings a fresh rose to put on the grave of a woman named Rose Griver. I think it was his wife. He only ever stays ten minutes and I guess that’s because conversations with the dead can be incredibly one-sided. It makes me sad when I see him reach for his handkerchief and hold it to his eyes. Even more sad when I see him leave, heading down the curving, twisting roads that lead out of the cemetery. Sometimes this place seems like a labyrinth trying to confuse the living so as to keep them here. I think of Nice Old Man alone in his house, with
out Rose.

  A rose for Rose.

  I smile remembering Faulkner’s short story we read in class last year, “A Rose for Emily.” Even though it’s kind of sick . . . and sad, and the Emily in the story is a recluse and kind of demented, I love it.

  I look back at Em’s grave. “Did you ever read ‘A Rose for Emily’?” I ask her. Em shakes her head no, so I proceed to tell her about it. As I’m telling her about the main character in the story, I start to wonder if Faulkner wrote the story because of Emily Dickinson. Maybe he pitied this great poet, so he offered her a rose in the form of a story.

  I see Emily’s lips purse up in annoyance at this thought, but I can’t help it. I connect the dots from the Emily in Faulkner’s story in her dreary black dress and gloomy house, to Emily Dickinson in her ghostly white dress peering out the windows of her Amherst house.

  And then I see myself tucked away in my house down the street from a cemetery.

  Am I warped and doomed? It’s a ridiculous thought because I’m really nothing like the Emily in the story. I mean, I would never kill a guy and hide him in my attic.

  Although, maybe, in a way, I did kill a guy.

  I look over at Andy’s grave. For a moment, a horrid moment, I imagine myself digging him up, taking his skeleton, and then locking it up in my room. It scares me, the way that thought came out of nowhere. So I quickly transport Andy back to his grave and pack the dirt over him again.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I ask Em. But she’s still miffed by my comparison of her and Faulkner’s Emily. I pity Faulkner who is about to get an earful.

  I figure I better get some kind of art supply thing to pacify my mom, but I can’t bring myself to go to the art store. So I say farewell to Em and drive to Super Target instead.

  I watch people as they walk around, how they look at clothes, buy DVDs, and drink giant red slushies from the in-store café. There are moms buying diapers and tween girls looking at nail polish, trying to pick between neon green or electric blue. There are six cashiers scanning countless things people buy, listening to countless beeps. Like that older lady with too blond hair. Her shifts are probably about six hours long, with a thirty-minute break in between, which means five and a half hours of beep, beep, beep. She could die on her way home tonight, and her last moments were spent ringing up this other lady’s cotton balls and Crock-Pot. Or the lady purchasing them could die instead and she’ll have spent her last moments trying to decide between this Crock-Pot or that one. How many hours or days or years do we spend doing useless things, making unimportant decisions, thinking about things that don’t matter. And is that what life is? Just a series of unimportant things that in the end don’t matter?

  I grab some Cap’n Crunch because I refuse to waste time deciding on any other kind of cereal, and pick up a pack of crayons and markers. Maybe I can convince Mom that I’m returning to a time when art made me happy.

  Chapter 8

  A week after meeting them at Harold’s, I haven’t talked to or hung out with Joel or Robyn at all. It’s normal to go this long with Robyn, but not really with Joel. Or maybe now it is. The weird thing is, I don’t know if I care. I wonder if it’s possible he forgot I existed. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it’s plausible. Maybe I imagined our entire friendship. Maybe Joel has always wondered why I hang around him so much and he never told me to get lost because he feels sorry for me. Maybe in the end, we are all just nobody to each other.

  I’m Nobody! Who are you?

  Are you—Nobody—Too?

  “Here,” Mom says, interrupting my thoughts and handing me another red poppy that she’s planting in the garden. She insisted I help her.

  At least they’re not roses.

  It’s Saturday and a procession comes by while Mom and I are on our knees digging up dirt. I look away and refuse to look inside the cars that trail behind the hearse. I watch Mom instead, as she brushes the dirt from her gloves. She doesn’t quite watch, but she stops digging for a moment.

  “Life is strange,” she says when the last car has made it past our house. “It is, then it isn’t. Just like these flowers.” She sighs and deposits the last plant into the hole she’s dug, then pats the earth around it.

  “Well, that’s it,” she says.

  I get up and take a look at the front garden. It seems ironic to me, how we can bury these little flowers, and they sprout with life.

  Mom goes inside to get us some drinks and I wonder about the person who just went by. I wonder what his or her obituary said. I make a mental note of the date to see if I can search for it later.

  I’ve actually tried to write my own obituary, but it’s hard. Not because imagining myself dead is heartbreaking, but probably because the idea of it is much different than the reality of it.

  All my accomplishments thus far have been physiological. All I’ve really managed to do is stay alive for seventeen years, and really, that’s mostly due to my parents. They’re the ones who make sure I don’t get eaten by a wild animal or something. So all I’ve accomplished is managing to breathe in and out for seventeen years, which doesn’t even require conscious thought.

  Francesca “Frenchie” Garcia breathed in and out for seventeen years.

  That’s all I’ve ever come up with.

  I’ve pictured my funeral more than once. Lots of times, actually. I don’t know why I do that either. I think Mom would put flowers in my hair, maybe ones like these red poppies. I think of the mourners, the quiet, the procession, and the formal black. If it weren’t so terrible, a funeral could almost be beautiful. If you let yourself forget that the eyes are sewn shut, that the skin is cold, that they’re putting someone in a hole forever to never see light again, it could almost be lovely.

  Mom comes out with the drinks and I almost ask her what she would include in my obituary, but decide not to because she’d wonder why I think such things. And I don’t have a good answer for that. So we sit quietly and drink lemonade.

  “You think that person was old?” I don’t quite realize I’ve said anything until Mom answers.

  “Yeah,” she says quickly. But then she hesitates and looks down the street. “I sure hope so.”

  That night I have trouble sleeping. I dream the same dream about Andy, the one where he’s my prom date.

  I’m wearing horrendous layers of pink taffeta as he leads me out to the middle of the dance floor. But instead of dancing, we lie down and the floor opens up beneath us, and suddenly, we’re in this big hole. Mom and Dad and Joel and Robyn appear above us, talking to each other while looking down at me, but I can’t hear anything they’re saying. Then a priest appears, which doesn’t make sense because I’m not even Catholic, and a disco ball keeps twirling high above that reflects red and gold lights everywhere. I try to tell everyone I’m not dead, but my lips feel sewn shut and my arms and legs are stiff and heavy and impossible to move. And even though my eyes are wide open, they start throwing dirt on top of me. Right when I almost can’t see anything anymore, Andy’s mom appears above me, dressed in black. She peers in and asks, “Is that her? Is her name Frenchie?”

  This is where I always wake up. Right when Andy’s mom makes eye contact with me. Right when I see the sudden realization in her face that, yes, I am Frenchie.

  Chapter 9

  The following morning/afternoon, I lie in bed trying to think of a reason to get up. But I can’t think of one, so I just stay in my room.

  A few years ago, I decided to make my room look like a painting I’d seen of Van Gogh’s bedroom. The first time I saw it, I was immediately struck with how the layout was identical to that of my room, down to where the window and bed were positioned. So naturally, my first thought was that I was Van Gogh in a past life. Of course I then realized the utter ridiculousness of such a thought. But in some egotistical way, I guess a part of me hasn’t really let go of the notion, which is why I went to all the trouble of painting my walls that same shade of blue, as best I could match it, and setting
up most of my furniture as true to the painting as possible. And my room became one of my favorite places to be, rivaled only by the cemetery.

  Andy had liked Van Gogh. My junior year I sat diagonally from him in English class. One day, as he sat sideways in his seat, like he always did before class started, I came into class and slammed my Van Gogh sketchbook on my desk. Andy had said, “Van Gogh,” and tapped his black pen on the cover.

  “Yeah,” I’d said.

  “Cool guy.”

  “Well, I don’t know him, but I hear he was pretty great,” I answered, even as my stomach flipped with excitement at having something in common with Andy Cooper.

  Andy had smiled. “Kind of crazy,” he’d said, pulling on his own ear. He knew about Van Gogh’s ear. I was impressed.

  “I like crazy,” I told him.

  He looked down at the floor, and then he looked back up at me, his hair falling over his eyes, making my hand tingle with an impulsive desire to reach over and touch it.

  “I’m crazy,” he whispered.

  My stomach drops and a little bit of acid creeps up into my throat as I remember those words.

  I’m crazy. That’s what he said. I should have asked him what he meant.

  But I didn’t. Instead, I acted like I was in a straitjacket and said, “The voices, Mommy, the voices!”

  Andy cracked up and I still remember the warm feeling that washed over me when he pointed at me with his pen and said, “Funny.”

  Andy Cooper.

  He was exactly the kind of guy I swore I’d never like. Exactly the kind of guy I’d make fun of for looking a little too pretty. Verging on preppy. The kind of guy who would vacation with his family somewhere like Martha’s Vineyard. Definitely not the kind of guy I’d run into at a club checking out a local band.