I liked my mother saying we. Too bad for Elaine if it hurt. Elaine was nice, she’d been kind to me. But now it was me and my parents, the three of us against the world. Elaine was on the world’s side. I wanted my father to understand that.
My father said, “Nico, we missed you so much. We’re so glad to see you.”
They took turns squishing and kissing me. I checked out Elaine’s reaction. She adored our sitcom reunion. She was as good at hiding whatever was going on with my father as I was at hiding my secret life with Aaron. I didn’t need to hide anything now. All of that was over.
“What did you guys do?” asked my dad.
“We watched movies,” said Elaine.
“Which movies?” my father asked.
“Vertigo,” Elaine said.
“I love that film,” my mother said.
“I don’t know,” said my father. “It kind of gives me the willies.”
Mom and Elaine exchanged looks that said, Men. What can you expect?
“Toughen up,” Elaine told Dad. For a few seconds, no one knew how to react, then everyone laughed. Except me.
“Did you like the film?” Mom wanted me to say yes.
“I did,” I said. “I—”
Everyone waited.
“I got tired. I took a nap in the hammock.”
“Kids,” my mother said. “Nico, darling, see it again in a few years.”
“Sure. Maybe sooner,” I said. Oh, if she had any idea! I shivered. Was it fever or fear? My secret was no longer safe. The staircase spirit rattled off the lies I should have told Elaine.
It took a certain cool on Elaine’s part not to mention that I’d felt sick. I’d tell them if I had to. In fact, I felt almost recovered.
We thanked Elaine and left. Driving home, my parents chatted about the fabulous time they’d had in the city. The Greek street fair with the homemade baklava, the fife and drum corps, the hip-hop group in the park. They didn’t ask about the barbecue or the fireworks. They weren’t ready to return to the subject of Emersonville and Margaret.
Not only had they gone shopping, but they’d found the perfect presents. Fancy olive oil for my father, sheet music for my mom, a Bach toccata she hadn’t been able to find online. A first edition of Two Serious Ladies for Elaine. A new video game for Tycho. They should have given the book and the game to Elaine, but the gifts were packed in their suitcase. My father would give them to her later.
“The game’s based on the Brothers Grimm,” said Dad.
“Excellent choice,” I said. Tycho would never play it. Hadn’t they brought me a present? I’d made them go without me. I couldn’t complain if I’d slipped their mind.
Mom said, “Boston was so beautiful. I’d forgotten how much I love it. Your father and I were wondering why we ever left the city. Maybe we could move back there sometime, find a way—”
“Good idea,” I said. And it was. A new life with all new kids who wouldn’t think of me as the dead girl’s sister. I could have some control over how much strangers knew about my past. I would never see Aaron again. Unless he missed me and found me.
Dad drove home as if the road was taking us into that glowing future. But the bright road dead-ended at our darkened house.
For me, the first rush of grief at being home was diluted with worry that I’d left some trace when I’d come to get Margaret’s shirt. But my parents weren’t looking for signs of me. They were remembering where they were. My mother put her music on the piano but didn’t open it. When I went to the kitchen for water— I still wasn’t feeling well—I found my father staring at his new olive oil as if he’d forgotten what it was for.
“Oh, Nico,” he said. “We got you a present, too. I can’t believe we forgot.”
I said, “I was wondering. But I didn’t want to ask.”
My dad said, “What a terrific kid you are!”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said.
He called my mom, who came into the kitchen with a long, narrow box. Inside was a watch. On its white face was a black spider-web. The hour and minute hands were spidery black needles, and the second hand was a tiny black spider that hopped around the web, one hop per second.
I loved it. It was more than a watch. It was proof that they knew me well enough to know what I would love. They’d bought it for me, only me. It wasn’t a bottle of vanilla oil or a shirt or a frozen dessert for a ghost that a crazy guy wished I was. A guy who’d been driven crazy by the death of my sister.
I said, “It’s perfect. I love it.”
“We had a feeling you would,” Dad said. “Your mother picked it out.”
My mother was looking at me, and for the first time in a long while, she actually seemed to see me. I remembered what it used to be like when I’d thought she was reading my mind. She knew that something had happened to me, but she couldn’t have known what it was.
I concentrated on the spider, hopping round and round without hope of peace or escape until the battery died. It reminded me of the Hitchcock movie, and of the sticky net that trapped us all: my parents, me, Elaine, Margaret, Aaron. Probably even Tycho. All I could see was the barren desert of time ahead, the minutes and seconds I would have to fill without Aaron or Margaret to help me.
My parents were still staring at me.
“It’s perfect,” I repeated.
I managed a watery smile. And then, as both of them watched, I turned away just in time to vomit on the kitchen table.
Fifteen
I RAN A FEVER FOR A FEW DAYS. ELAINE BLAMED HERSELF. MY parents felt guilty for leaving me. I overheard my father telling my mother that we should call a doctor, and my mother saying that, in case he hadn’t noticed, we no longer had a doctor. To which my father replied that he’d noticed she had two. I knew whom he meant: Dr. Dawson, the arthritis specialist she’d given up on, and Dr. Viscott, who’d been giving her drugs, but whom she didn’t trust enough to press a popsicle stick on my tongue.
“Neither of them knows anything,” I heard my mother say.
My father diagnosed the flu. Eventually, my fever subsided. But I’d lost my appetite again, and there were lingering symptoms. Misery, for one. I realized how waiting to see Aaron and then seeing Aaron and then thinking about the last time I’d seen him and looking forward to the next time—how much that had structured my time. Without that simple armature, the days imploded around me.
My illness demoralized us all. Even when I felt physically better, I kept the covers over my head. I burrowed beneath the light summer quilt to muffle the sound of the world, which was silent enough, except when my mother practiced the Bach toccata. Eventually, the mistakes would start, and she’d begin furiously picking out one-fingered nursery rhymes—“Old McDonald,” “London Bridge.” Or I’d hear her and Sally laughing. Every so often, the sad voice of the loon would echo over the lake.
My father spent all day writing at Goldengrove. When I said I wanted to quit working there, no one argued. After Elaine left in the afternoon, my father carried his Selectric to the front of the store and wrote between customers.
And so began the worst time of all, ferocious and unexpected. Grief seemed to have outlasted us, and, besieged, we surrendered. I lay in bed, I lay on the couch. I thought about Margaret and cried.
From time to time, I heard the faint hiss of a whispered conference that I knew was about me. Separately, my mother and father asked if I wanted to see someone. I wanted to see Aaron and tell him that my parents were doing the same thing his parents had done.
Elaine found a new babysitter. I was glad not to have to see her. I didn’t want her nagging me to tell my parents about Aaron. When she heard I was sick, and then that I wouldn’t get out of bed, she called and made me swear that Aaron had only kissed me.
She said, “I trust you, Nico. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
I said, “I told you the truth, Elaine,” and hung up the phone.
Day turned into night and then day again. I couldn’t sleep or wake up. I dreamed about Aa
ron, vague dreams from which I awoke with the warm feeling of having been chosen, singled out of a group. In my dreams he was always sweet, always thoughtful and tender.
I’d loved Aaron. I could say that now that the danger had passed. And what did love mean, exactly? I had no one to ask. I needed to ask Margaret. But how would that conversation have gone? I’ve fallen in love with your boyfriend, who tried to bring you back from the dead by turning me into you. I could almost see the face she would make and hear her chiming laugh. Would she blame Aaron? It wasn’t his fault, or mine. Love was love. We’d loved her. Neither of us could help it. Maybe when enough time had passed, Aaron could love me. Maybe he would appreciate what made me unlike anyone else.
But I’d forgotten what that was, what was me and what was Margaret. It had been so much easier when she was alive and I could compare us, side by side, and measure the distance between us.
ONE NIGHT, I DREAMED THAT THE PHONE RANG. I picked it up. It was Margaret.
She said, “I have something for Aaron. Go into my room and get it. Tell him it’s from me.”
I awoke with Margaret’s voice in my head and the unshakable conviction that she wanted me to call Aaron. She knew about the ice cream, the kiss. She was telling me to get in touch with him. You couldn’t ignore the dead’s wishes. All I had to do was figure out what she wanted me to give him.
I went into the hall and stood in front of Margaret’s door and asked her to guide me. I walked in and turned on the light. It was sad, but I could stand it. I prayed for my parents not to wake up, and I froze till my prayers were answered.
I remembered Margaret teaching me how to swim. We’d started with the back float. She’d held me under my arms and skimmed me over the surface of the lake, like a water bug. Once more she held me and moved me, but now tears streamed down my face as I leaned on whatever force was pushing me across the room.
This was what I’d wanted. This was what everyone wanted. The sailors on the storm-tossed ship, the believers on Disappointment Hill. They prayed to be lifted and set down where they belonged. The only thing that spoiled it was my confusion about how I could be having a miraculous out-of-body experience and at the same time wondering how I would describe it to Aaron.
Margaret’s spirit steered me to her bulletin board, where she’d tacked up her idols. The ones who remained were the winners: Bessie Smith, Lester Young, Sam Cooke, Jimi Hendrix.
I dried my tears with the back of my hand. The collage came into focus. I saw something I’d never noticed, a snapshot of Margaret and Aaron. His arm was around her, and both of them were smiling into the camera. Aaron was wearing a jacket and tie. He looked purely happy and years younger than the person I knew. Margaret wore her blue glitter T-shirt and a short pleated skirt. In the background, dressed-up strangers were eating at tables with white cloths. I couldn’t have been more surprised had I found a marriage license. How had I never noticed this clue to my sister’s life with Aaron? When and where had they gone out for such an elegant meal, and who took the picture?
I studied Margaret’s face, then Aaron’s. Then I made myself turn away, ashamed to be feeling, all at once, grief and longing for my sister, yearning for her boyfriend. Was she warning me to be careful? Or was I supposed to call Aaron and say she wanted to give him the snapshot?
Then something—Margaret, I told myself—drew my eye to the upper corner of the picture, and to an orange origami crane dangling from a pushpin. I flinched, as if the faded bird had brushed my face with its wings.
It was one of the paper birds we’d folded in Mrs. Akins’s class. I had no idea where my crane had gone. But Margaret had kept hers. This was what Mrs. Akins meant. The message from my sister. I was sure that the origami crane was what my sister wanted me to give Aaron, though I didn’t know how I knew.
I waited to phone Aaron. Once I did, it would be over. I’d know if he wanted to see me. I put it off till I couldn’t hold out. I dialed. Aaron answered.
“It’s Nico,” I said. The silence was like a conversation. Every so often, he’d inhale as if he were smoking, or about to speak.
“I know who it is,” he said. “What do you want, Nico?”
“Can I see you? Something strange happened.”
“I had the flu,” he said.
“So did I. Maybe we were both getting sick, maybe that was the problem.” More likely we’d made each other sick, exchanging some virus along with the ice cream.
“Strange how?” Aaron said wearily.
I said, “It’s about Margaret.”
“What isn’t?”
“Sorry,” I said.
He didn’t bother asking what I was sorry for. He didn’t say, Don’t apologize. He said, “Can’t you tell me on the phone?”
He must really have hated me. My eyes watered. I focused on sounding calm.
I said, “There’s something I need to give you.”
“What is it, Nico? What do you want? Quit screwing with my head.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that. You know I wouldn’t do that.”
“Right,” he said. “I got that.”
“You’re the only one,” I said. “The only one who could understand.”
“Understand what?” he said. “I don’t—”
I said, “I dreamed about Margaret.”
“So what. So did I.”
“What was your dream?” I said. “I don’t remember,” he lied.
I said, “I dreamed she called me on the phone.”
A silence. Then, “What did she say?”
“She told me to give you something.”
“What?”
If I’d said, an origami crane, it would have ended there. He would never have believed that Margaret would bother contacting me about something so childish and trite.
“She told me to give it to you. I need to see you in person.” This time the silence lasted so long I thought the line had gone dead. Then Aaron said, “Okay. When?”
I pretended to have plans for that afternoon. We arranged to meet the next day.
I SOAKED FOR AN HOUR IN THE TUB, I SPLASHED ON VANILLA OIL, I used Margaret’s hair dryer and a little of her makeup. I put on her blue comet shirt. I kept getting it tangled as I slipped it over my head.
The morning was misty and cool, and the air had a smoky late-summer sweetness. My eagerness to see Aaron made me cheerful and optimistic even as I told myself not to get my hopes up.
I biked past a cornfield, where, I was shocked to see, the stalks were tasseled and taller than I was. Somehow the summer had slipped away when I wasn’t looking. I was glad that it was ending without having done even more damage than it had.
Reaching into my back pocket, I checked for the paper crane I’d pressed between two pieces of cardboard: my magic charm, a real one this time, not like the Hawaiian shirt. Margaret had chosen this one. I told myself that Margaret would keep me safe, that she knew where this was headed, toward one final gesture of friendship and goodwill that would let me and Aaron have fond, unembarrassed memories of each other. Though I couldn’t help wondering why I imagined the dead saw further from their vantage point under the ground. I needed to think like Margaret, like a poet and a believer. I felt like a girl in a fairy tale on a mission that depends on not allowing cowardly thoughts and only thinking brave ones.
Aaron’s van was in the usual spot, except that he’d always parked parallel to the road and waited for me in the open tailgate. Now the van was backed up into the field, and Aaron sat behind the wheel with the doors and windows shut. Something made me want to turn and leave before he saw me. But he’d already seen me. I couldn’t just ride away. We were friends who’d been tricked by grief into making a mistake, and now we’d learned our lesson, and we could be friends again.
I eased my bike onto the grass and walked around to the driver’s side. Aaron eyed me blankly, then rolled down his window.
“Hi,” I said. “Nice to see you.”
“Hi?” he said. “Nice
to see me?”
“I don’t know, Aaron. I don’t know why I said that. How are you?”
“Nice to see me.” He shook his head. He had paint on his T-shirt and jeans. So what if he hated me? He was painting again. He had to give me some credit. At least he could be pleasant.
I went around to the other side and let myself into the van. The van smelled a little like alcohol. Not heavy, but it was there.
“So what is it?” Aaron said at last. “What did she tell you to bring me?”
Why was Aaron sneering? He was making me feel like his stalker.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sitting on it.” I should have taken the cardboard folder out of my pocket. I had to lift my ass to slide it out of my jeans. Aaron watched me, watched my ass. He sighed. The alcohol smell got stronger.
I said, “Aaron, are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I’m great,” he said. “Never been butter.”
“Butter?” I said
Aaron’s eyes were as flat as poker chips. He said, “Better. I never felt butter.”
“I feel a lot butter myself,” I said. Aaron stared at me.
“So let me have it,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“The so-called present your sister told you to give me in the bullshit bogus dream.”
“It’s not bullshit,” I said. Tears of outrage popped into my eyes. I was bringing a gift from my sister. “I’d never lie about something like that.”
“No one said you were lying, Nico.” He made it sound like an annoying thing I did all the time. It was amazing, how fast you could go from being friends to this.
I said, “Here. I’m pretty sure this is what she meant.”
Aaron watched me peel the origami crane from between the cardboard layers. I thought his expression was how I must look when I accidentally saw a photo of Margaret, or heard music when I wasn’t expecting to, or caught a glimpse of the lake.
He said, “You knew about this, Nico. Margaret told you. So this is a joke, right? It’s a bitch thing to do.”
Goldengrove Page 20
