Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee
Page 23
Aunt Hannah stares into the water, and Lee leans on her shoulder. Mom and Jay stand a little ways away. I guess they’re all thinking about Dee, the way they knew her. Aunt Hannah and Lee must be thinking about how she would talk and talk, and about the way she laughed when she was happy and cried when she was sad and was all about experiencing everything.
Now that so much time has passed, she is more often the Dee that I think of, too.
Vinnie, who’s been standing alone on the other side of Dee’s grave, walks over to me. He reaches out a hand, and I take it.
“There’s still a lot you haven’t told us, isn’t there?” he asks.
“All that matters is that we’re here,” I say. I pull the girls close.
“Uncle Vinnie, can you swim?” Lola asks.
“Sure, kid,” he says. “I swim like a dolphin.”
“What’s a dolphin?”
“It’s a . . . an animal that swims,” he says.
“So it’s a fish?” Lola asks.
“Not exactly. How about we go to the library, and I show you a picture? And we can read all about them?”
“Okay,” Lola says. “I want to learn how to swim.”
“Me too!” says Barbie.
“Swimming lessons for everyone,” I say. “Your mom and I took lessons together when we were your age.”
“Mommy Chel, is she still up there?” Barbie asks.
“She’s at peace,” I say.
“She doesn’t have to yell anymore,” Lola says. “Right? She’s not sad?” She looks up at me with the big blue eyes that are copies of Dee’s, those eyes that are so full of understanding beyond her years.
“That’s right,” I say. “She’s happy now.” I look over at Vinnie. I hope he doesn’t repeat what he just heard. I’ve never told anyone what Stacie was like, and I don’t think the girls have talked about it before. There are some things that are only for the three of us.
Vinnie is tearing up, but I can see that he understands.
“Dee would be so proud of you girls,” he says. “I mean Stacie, your mom.”
Barbie is crying.
“It’s okay,” Lola says. She takes her little sister’s hand. “She’s not sad anymore.”
Vinnie wipes a tear away and puts his arm around me.
I hug both the girls at once. They know what happened, but it doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is how we live our lives now.
The water rushes by, on and on the same today as yesterday, and the same yesterday as before we ever came here. I picture Kyle on the riverbank, wet and crying over Dee’s dead body, her blue eyes open to the sky. I picture Dee sitting on the sandbar, telling me about how she got her period. I go back before that, to another day, when we waded in the river and talked and laughed and then went home again and slept in our own beds. Any of these things could have happened, or not.
Someday, I will tell them all the truth. They have supported me through everything, and they will probably support me in this. But for now, I want them to remember Dee the way she was. I want them to think of this girl in the picture, the one who is smiling, with her blond hair floating around her face and her bright blue eyes shining. She was our cousin, our sister, our daughter, our friend. She was a good person, full of love and full of life. She became the mother to two precious, brilliant, beautiful children. She was loved.
© John Thompson
MARY G. THOMPSON was raised in Cottage Grove and Eugene, Oregon. She was a practicing attorney for more than seven years, including almost five years in the US Navy, and is now a law librarian in Washington, DC. She received her BA from Boston University, her JD from the University of Oregon, and her MFA in writing for children from The New School.
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