Strange but True

by John Searles

  “I see someone writing a letter,” Chantrel says. “Yes, someone is writing a letter. That is what Ronnie is showing me.”

  “Are you sure it’s not a poem?” Melissa asks.

  Philip remembers then that he had read one of his poems at the funeral. It was the first time he had admitted to his family that he liked to do something other than read and watch TV. The poem had been called “Sharp Crossing,” and it was an extended metaphor about a young boy who climbed over a rusted barbed wire fence and cut himself on his way to the other side. Philip’s poetry professor at the community college had loved it. But all the journals he’d submitted it to after he moved to New York had sent back a polite form letter of rejection. Only one lousy editor took the time to scrawl something on the bottom, and even that wasn’t encouraging: Less metaphor, more meaning! Philip used the letters to line the tank of that grotesque snake as well as the cage of the vicious mynah bird he took care of in the studio he sublet from Donnelly Fiume—that rejection went on top.

  “Hold on,” Chantrel says. “Indeed, it is a poem. Does someone connected to Ronnie like to write poetry?”

  “His brother,” Melissa says on the tape.

  “Does his brother’s name begin with a B?” There is a moment of silence during which Chantrel must realize she’s gotten it wrong. Then she says, “I’m sorry. I heard him incorrectly. He is showing me what I think might be a D or a T.” Another pause. “Does his name begin with a T or a D, or perhaps a P?”

  Or an A, B, C, D, E, F, G? Philip thinks. Or maybe H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P?

  “Philip,” Melissa says to her. “It’s his brother, Philip.”

  “Yes, that’s it. Sorry, the connection was bad for a moment. Ronnie wants you to tell him that he loves his poetry.”

  “Did you hear that?” Melissa says now, looking at him in the rearview mirror.

  Philip forces a smile, but it makes him feel like crying. He glances at his mother, who is making the volcano mouth again. When the tape stops, her voice erupts so loud and sudden that it startles Philip. “That’s it? That’s what you woke us up in the middle of the night for? To tell us that Ronnie likes Philip’s poetry!” She says the last word with all the emphasis on the p, like she is spitting out something rotten—to her, Philip’s poetry is something rotten.

  “M,” Philip says when he sees the look of surprise on Melissa’s face. “Cut it out.”

  His mother stops to take a breath, but she is not done yet—far from it.

  “How dare you waste my time with this bullshit? Do you know how hard it is for me? Do you? Every single day of my life I have to walk by his door. Every single day of my life I have to wake up and think my son is dead! You can just go on with your life, like Chantel or Chandra or whatever the fuck her name is said on the tape, but I will never go on! You can get knocked up by some guy without bothering to get married and live happily ever after, but this is it for me. Do you understand that? This is my life!”

  “M!” Philip shouts again as tears well in Melissa’s eyes and spill down her sad, ruined face. “Enough. Come on. Stop it.”

  But she won’t stop. And she is wielding her finger now like a weapon, pointing directly at Melissa’s face when she says the word you or your, then jabbing it into her own chest when she says something about herself. “You think I’m supposed to be impressed by those scars? Honey, you may look like that on the outside because you happened to be with him on the night he died. But you have no idea how disfigured and downright ugly I am on the inside because of what happened to my child. And if you could see it, I guarantee you’d run the other way. So do us both a favor, little girl, and back this shit box out of my driveway and don’t you ever come back. You go have your bastard child and live your fucking life. But leave me alone.”

  “Mom!” Philip screams. “I said shut up! Shut! Up!”

  And this time, she finally does shut up. She puts her finger against the cold glass, cooling it down, recharging for round two. The only sound that can be heard is Melissa crying as she buries her head in her hands. Her every breath is notched with small choking sounds, as though something long and knotted is being dredged up out of her throat. Philip is used to these violent eruptions, but this poor girl came here tonight without a clue as to the bottomless cauldron of vitriol that is his mother.

  He waits for Melissa to stop crying and make the motions to leave. But it doesn’t happen. He waits for his mother to tighten that black wool cloak around her neck and get out of the car. But that doesn’t happen either. Instead, she stays in her seat, probably waiting for the opportunity to finish the girl off. She keeps her gaze on Melissa’s shoulders as they heave up and down, like a cat spitting up a hairball or a clump of mowed grass.

  Philip doesn’t know what to do next. His eyes go briefly to those photos on the dashboard, where Melissa is smiling next to Ronnie. His brother was everything Philip wasn’t—popular, outgoing, athletic, an honor student. The normal son his parents wanted and got right on the second try. Ronnie had even outdone him by dying, because he would never get the chance to mess up his life the way Philip had. All these years later, Philip still feels a phantom pang of jealousy just looking at his brother’s picture, which only makes him feel more pathetic for being jealous of a dead person. Finally, he stops looking at the picture and puts his hand on Melissa’s small shoulder. He tells her that he’s sorry for what just happened, that there’s no reason to cry, that everything is okay.

  “Everything is not okay,” she says, peeling her hands from her face and craning her neck to look at him. From this angle, the dashboard light illuminates a jigsaw portion of her face, setting her mangled patch of skin aglow. She looks lit from within, as though a fire has been stoked inside of her. “You don’t understand. The tape is not done yet. I just have to flip it over so you can hear the rest.”

  “The rest?” Philip says.

  And then she does exactly that—reaching down to press the Eject button, flipping the tape, and pushing it back in. Instantly, Chantrel’s voice fills the car, this time more hushed than before. Melissa turns up the volume. “But none of that is why you’ve come here tonight, is it?” Chantrel whispers.

  Outside, the wind blows so hard it shakes the car. The bare branches of the giant oak tree in the front yard make that angry scuttling sound.

  “No,” Melissa says on the tape, shaking her head now too.

  “You have come about the baby, haven’t you?”

  Melissa nods, as though she is still in the presence of Chantrel. It is all so pitiful and sad that Philip has to turn his eyes away. He doesn’t want to think about what his mother will do when the tape ends this time. Through that tiny fishing hole in the ice, he looks up at his brother’s dark window and begins making a mental map of the room to put his mind on something else. Anything else. There is the single bed with the navy blue quilt; the nicked wooden desk with the electric pencil sharpener; the clutter of trophies, each with a small golden man on top, running, throwing, catching; a U2 poster on the back of the door of Bono strumming a guitar; an ancient set of oversize silver walkie-talkies on the bookshelf. When Philip can’t remember anymore, he tries to recall those beer T-shirts instead:

  I GAVE UP DRINKING: IT WAS THE WORST FIFTEEN MINUTES OF MY

  LIFE…

  THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEER AND JESUS: YOU DON’T HAVE TO WAIT

  2000 + YEARS FOR A SECOND BEER…

  “All these years and you’ve never stopped loving him, have you?” Chantrel is saying as his mother starts tapping her fist against the door, warming up for what is sure to be an explosive finale. “First love is the most pure, because we give our entire heart and soul over to the person. You gave that to Ronnie, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Melissa says in unison with her own voice on the tape.

  His mother knocks her fist harder.

  BEER, SO MUCH MORE THAN A BREAKFAST DRINK, Philip thinks.

  CONSERVE WATER, DRINK BEER…

  GREAT MINDS DRINK
ALIKE…

  “He is telling me that he hears you. He is telling me that he knows the pain you’ve felt since he passed to the other side. And that’s why he has found a way to carry on in your life. That’s why this baby is special. I think you know it is the gift that you have been praying for all these years. It has been blessed by Ronnie so that you can move on. It is… I’m sorry, dear, but the connection is cutting out. He says he has to leave now. He’s gone. I’ve lost him.”

  This time the tape goes quiet for good.

  Philip stares nervously at his mother, who has stopped her tapping. She looks like she is getting ready to scream again, but Melissa is crying harder now, her shoulders heaving, her hands shaking. He senses that even his mother doesn’t know what to do.

  “What is it?” Philip asks Melissa.

  She is gasping so loudly that it takes her a moment to get out her next words. “Don’t you get it? That’s what I came here to tell you. What she said about the baby on the tape is true.”

  “What’s true?” Philip says, without giving his mother a chance to speak.

  “It is a gift from him.” She stops talking and inhales a final deep breath before telling them, at long last, the reason she has come here tonight. “I’ve only been with one person in my life. Ronnie. On the night he died. It was our first and last time together. My first and last time with anyone. And now, all these years later, I’m pregnant and I don’t know what to do. Because somehow, I don’t know how, but a strange sort of miracle has happened. This baby inside me belongs to him.”

  chapter 2

  FOUR YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, FIFTEEN DAYS, AND FIVE HOURS BEFORE Melissa Moody shows up at the Chases’ house and delivers this unthinkable news, she is sitting on the cushioned seat by her bedroom window, waiting and watching for the white limousine to round the corner with Ronnie inside. On this warm June evening, she is still a high school senior, still an innocent teenager with the same kind of sweet, flawless face as those girls in the department-store circulars that come with the Sunday paper. Melissa doesn’t know yet, of course, that this will be her last night with that face. For now, she is happily dressed in her lacy, pearl-colored Gunne Sax gown. It is a vintage dress that she bought for twenty-nine dollars at The Rusty Zipper in Philadelphia, since she couldn’t find anything decent at the King of Prussia Mall given the fifty-dollar budget set by her stingy parents. Melissa is so grateful that they consented to let her and her sister go to the prom that she hasn’t dared utter a single word of complaint.

  Down the hall, she hears the sounds of Stacy getting ready. A hair dryer whirs on and off. A brush clanks against the vanity. The medicine cabinet opens then slams shut. Stacy opted for an emerald green dress off the clearance rack at Filene’s that their mother took in on the sewing machine. Melissa warned her that it was a mistake, but Stacy didn’t listen. Now her sister is sorry because it looks, well, it looks like an emerald green dress off the clearance rack that their mother took in on the sewing machine.

  “Missy!” Stacy yells in a nails-against-the-chalkboard voice. “Please come save me from this fashion nightmare!”

  “I’ll help you in a minute,” Melissa calls back, gazing once more toward the end of the street and past the white clapboard church on the corner. The limo is nowhere in sight. All she sees is a group of young girls Rollerblading near the stop sign. They’ve built a makeshift ramp with scrap plywood and two large rocks borrowed from a neighbor’s stone wall. So far none of them has made it over without crashing to the ground. I used to babysit for those girls back in junior high, Melissa thinks, now here I am going to my prom. For the first time in her life, she feels grownup and free—or close to free anyway—from the prison of her parents’ rules. Much of that feeling has to do with Ronnie and the plans they’ve made for tonight, not to mention the plans they’ve made for their lives after graduation.

  “Missy! Ronnie and Chaz will be here any second, and I look like a mermaid!”

  Melissa can’t help but laugh. “I’m sure Chaz will love you as a mermaid. It’ll be like that movie they always show on TBS with Daryl What’s-her-ass and Tom Hanks.”

  “Very funny,” Stacy says, pushing open the bedroom door and holding the brush in front of her like a small sword. “I’m serious. I need your help.”

  “It’s not like I didn’t warn you.”

  “Okay, so you warned me. I admit it. You are hereby officially dubbed the all-knowing goddess of prom-dress wisdom. So can you come down from your throne and tell me what I should do?”

  Stacy puts her hand against her hip, a hip that Melissa can’t help but notice looks twice its normal size thanks to the dress. The thing fits her like the slipcovers their mother made for the donated chairs in the lounge of the church basement—tight in all the wrong places, baggy everywhere else. The color hurts to look at.

  “Is there a dimmer switch on the back of that thing?” Melissa says, shielding her eyes with her hand.

  Her sister lets out a huff. “Make fun of me all you want, but it’s not like you just stepped out of the pages of Seventeen in that hundred-year-old doily.”

  “It’s a twenty-year-old doily.”

  “Whatever. Look, are you going to help me or not?”

  Melissa knows that she should stop teasing Stacy, but it is just too much fun. She goes to her dresser and pulls open the top drawer. Buried beneath her socks and underwear and what she thinks of as her decoy diary is a pair of sunglasses. Melissa takes them out and gives them to her sister.

  “I don’t get it,” Stacy says.

  “Tell Chaz to put them on to protect him from the UV rays when you guys are dancing.”

  “Fuck you!” Stacy screams, and throws the hairbrush and sunglasses at Melissa. They nearly hit her in the face before landing on the waxed wooden floor and sliding beneath the bed.

  “Girls!” their father calls up the stairs in his deep, Sunday-sermon drawl.

  Melissa and Stacy know what’s coming next, and they mouth his words in unison when he says, “You know how I feel about profanity.”

  “Stacy, tell him you’re sorry before he changes his mind about letting us go.”

  Her sister looks down at her green ruffles in all of their splendor. “At this point, he’d be doing me a favor.”

  “Come on, Stace. I’m not letting you screw up this night for me. Tell him you’re sorry.”

  “If I do, will you stop ragging on me about the dress?”

  “Deal.”

  “Sorry, Dad!” Stacy calls down the stairs. Then to her sister, she poses the same question she’s been asking for weeks. “So should I wear my hair up or down?”

  Melissa steals another glance out the window toward the stop sign near the church at the corner. One of the Rollerblading girls—Wendy Dugas is her name—attempts the jump and wipes out. The limo is still nowhere in sight. She turns her focus back toward the mirror that is her sister. Melissa used to love everything about having a twin, from the matching outfits their mother bought them growing up to the questions people would inevitably ask: Have you ever had a psychic experience? Have you ever traded places for a day? How did your parents tell you apart when you were babies? Just knowing there was a Xerox of herself in the world used to make Melissa feel special. Lately, though, that feeling has changed. When she looks at Stacy, Melissa finds herself focusing on their differences instead of their similarities. For starters, there is the way her sister’s mouth is always set in a bratty pout, the way her face looks stretched and elastic when she laughs. Then there is the laugh itself, which is grating and so much louder than Melissa’s. Ronnie was the first to point out the small differences while listing the reasons he was drawn to Melissa instead of Stacy. He was the first person to ever see her as a wholly separate being from her twin, which makes her love him all the more.

  “Earth to Missy,” Stacy is saying. “Hello. Are you in there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Well, what do you think of my hair?”

  “Your
hair? I thought it was the dress that needed help.”

  “It is the dress. But I’m focusing on the things I can fix in the next few minutes. So which is it: up or down?” Stacy demonstrates, as though for the first time, holding her hair on top of her head, then letting it fall to her shoulders.

  “Down,” Melissa tells her, because she is wearing hers up and she wants to look different from her sister tonight. Especially tonight.

  Stacy is about to ask another question when her eyes go to the window. “Oh, my God! They’re here!”

  Melissa turns and sees the gleaming white limousine pass the evergreen at the corner of the yard then pull into the driveway. The last bits of fading sunlight glint off the long sleek hood; the glass is tinted black just like in the movies. They cross the room and watch as the car comes to a stop behind their parents’ gold Geo. A door opens and out steps Chaz. At the age of seventeen, he already has the beginnings of a beer belly. His skin is the color of a cooked ham, his hair clipped so close to his scalp that it is impossible to tell the true color. Chaz is leaving for the air force one week after graduation. Even now, as he stands in their driveway dressed in his rented black tux, Melissa can picture him in uniform. He and Ronnie are friends because they’re on the football, basketball, wrestling, and track teams together, but Melissa has to constantly reassure herself that they are nothing alike. For one thing, Chaz is forever groping her sister by the lockers at school—a major no-no if their parents ever found out. And in algebra class, he makes a habit of writing Melissa flirty little notes in the pages of her textbook—a major no-no if Stacy ever found out. Worst of all are the lame “minister’s daughter” jokes he makes when the four of them are together:

  She’s a minister’s daughter, but I wouldn’t put anything pastor…

  She’s a minister’s daughter, but she sure knows how to fleece her flock…