Dead Letters

by Caite Dolan-Leach

  I skip upstairs, feeling the familiar grooves of the wooden stairs beneath my feet. I have instinctively taken off my shoes; my mother loathes the presence of footwear in her once-pristine Zen paradise. She could be driven to apoplectic rage by someone sitting in the living room with boots on their feet. The house is definitely dirtier than it was during my childhood; I suspect Zelda fired the housekeeper I’d hired from Craigslist before leaving for Paris. I feel grit and dust accumulating on the soles of my bare feet, and as I touch the banister, a layer of grime coats my fingertips in a seamless transfer. But the stairs are the same beneath me and I feel each creak in my body with intense recognition.

  Mom and Betsy are outside, on the balcony that opens from the library. Betsy has her back turned to the barn, but my mother is facing it full-on, glaring belligerently at the scar in our lawn, zigzagged with crime-scene tape.

  “Hi, Betsy, thanks so much for this,” I say, preparing myself for the inevitable hug as Betsy lurches out of her chair to greet me. “Really, you’re a lifesaver.” I wonder at my choice of words, but Betsy smooshes me to her breasts with a squeeze.

  “Oh, Ava, I’m so sorry about—about your sister!” She instantly begins to cry, her substantial chest heaving up and down, her brown doe eyes watering. I pat her shoulder, trying to create a crevasse of space between our bodies. Her sweat moistens my shirt.

  “Thanks. I’m so grateful you were here.” I pause. “Hi, Mom.” I lean in to kiss her cheek, interrupting her stare toward the barn. “How are you?”

  “Goddamnit, Zelda, what the fuck did you do to the barn? How many fucking times do I have to tell you not to smoke up there?”

  I flinch, knowing I should have expected to be confused with my sister. “Mom, it’s me, Ava,” I say patiently. “I just got here, I flew from Paris?”

  “Very cute, Zelda. God, you’re exactly the same as when you were four, always trying to hide behind your sister whenever you screwed something up. I’m not an idiot, nor am I insane. I expect you to deal with that”—she gestures imperiously toward the barn—“immediately. And with none of your usual dramatic bullshit, please.”

  I glance at Betsy, who is unable to tear her eyes from this scene. The rapt rubbernecking of good neighbors. I turn to her.

  “Betsy, thanks again for everything. I know she can’t have been easy the last day or two. And thank you for calling the fire department. Who knows…what could have happened.”

  “Oh, Ava!” Betsy carries on huffing and puffing without skipping a beat. “It was so terrifying, the whole barn just lit up like that! I rushed over as quickly as I could but—your sister!”

  “Zelda, I need more wine,” Nadine says sharply, interrupting Betsy’s whimpers. I ignore her.

  “How are your kids, Betsy?” I ask.

  “Kids? Mine? Oh, they’re okay, I guess,” she titters. “Rebecca just started working as a dental assistant, actually. And you remember Cody?” she says, fishing. Yes, I do. Cody was one of the irredeemable assholes who graduated with me. I’d love to tell Betsy how he used to follow the one openly gay kid in our school around, whispering “Faggot” and smacking his ass.

  “Yup. How is he?”

  “He lives in San Francisco now. With one of his college roommates,” she announces proudly. I suppress a giggle. That’s perfect.

  “Zelda, for Christ’s sake,” Nadine interjects.

  “I’ll deal with her now, Betsy,” I say. A gentle dismissal. She seems grateful.

  “No, no, of course, Ava. It was no problem. Anything I can do, really. I’ll stop by tomorrow with more food.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I say quickly. “Really, you don’t.”

  “No, no trouble. I’ll check up on you then. Nadine’s already eaten, and there’s more casserole in the fridge.” That should make it easy not to eat. She dabs at her tears with the collar of her oversized batik-print muumuu. “At least I got her to eat this time. Last time I was here, she wouldn’t touch a thing.”

  “Thanks, Betsy. Oh, and Marlon’s downstairs—you can say hello on your way out.”

  Betsy’s face tightens perceptibly—she’s one of the few people who isn’t taken in by my father’s charm; she has a long memory and can’t forgive Marlon for the way he left. It makes me want to like her more.

  “I will, of course. And, Ava? My sincere condolences,” she says earnestly and hugs me again. She bobs her head and waddles through the glass doors, trundling her way downstairs. I flop into the Adirondack chair she has vacated, glad that it faces the tasting room, though it is unpleasantly warm from her body.

  “You look pretty good, Mom. All considered.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, Ava,” she says.

  I smile widely. “So you did know.”

  “As I said, doll, I’m not insane. Not entirely. I just despise that woman, with all her clucking and sanctimonious…good-naturedness.” Mom has to pause for the right word, but I can tell she’s lucid-ish. “She’s thick as a plank and doesn’t have the good grace to realize it. I’ve been listening to her prattle for the last twenty-four hours about how it’s going to be fine, you’ll be here soon, et cetera.” She rolls her eyes in exasperation. “I came out here and parked in front of the barn, hoping that it would scare her off. But she’s got to do the right thing. God, and that casserole…” She shudders theatrically.

  “What happened, Momma?” I ask.

  “How the hell should I know? I slept through the whole thing. Goddamn drugs your sister gave me.” Mom takes a slug from the wineglass in her hand, which trembles as she clutches the stem. Reflexively, I look around for the bottle, to gauge how much she’s had. She catches me looking.

  “Jesus, you’re worse than your sister. At least she has the manners not to make me drink alone. You haven’t ended up in AA, have you, Little AA?” She’s sneering, making fun of my father’s nickname for me, and goading me into drinking with her. I know it, and it doesn’t change the fact that I want to.

  “Dad’s on his way up with glasses and a bottle,” I say casually, and enjoy watching her flinch.

  “Marlon is here? The big fish that got away?” She tries for a lighthearted tone, but I can hear the anxiety in her warbling voice. She touches her face in instinctive, irrepressible self-consciousness, the gesture of a woman who knows she doesn’t look good.

  “Got in this morning. Surely you must have known he would come home for his daughter’s funeral.”

  “Yes, I gathered he would. Surprised he didn’t bring that new ball and chain of his.”

  “Maria is hardly new, Mom. They’ve been married almost eight years.”

  “Maria? I thought her name was Lorette.”

  “That was my girlfriend when we met, Nadine,” my father says from the doorway. He’s studying her with a strange expression on his face; I can’t remember the last time they saw each other, but I know she has to look shocking. She is so thin.

  “Oh, of course, I remember,” Mom says automatically. I know she doesn’t, but she will work very hard to convince us otherwise.

  “You could be forgiven for forgetting. The relationship was very brief,” I snipe. Nadine snorts. Dad holds up a bottle of sparkling wine and three Champagne flutes with a slightly sheepish look on his face. The glasses hang suspended between his fingers, clinking magically. I love that sound.

  “There’s only sparkling in the fridge,” he apologizes. I nod, giving him permission. He puts the glasses down on the deck railing and deftly divests the bottle of its wire cap and cork with a practiced series of movements. All three of us cringe at the jubilant sound, and Mom and Dad both flick their eyes toward the barn, as though that Pavlovian signal will summon Zelda, perhaps even from beyond the grave. Champagne is her favorite drink, of course. Though this is obviously a sparkling wine, made in our own cellar. Dad pours our delicately burbling wine into flutes and distributes them, my mother first, then me. I lift my glass defiantly.

  “Well, family. Cheers.” They both loo
k at me blankly, and I turn my head toward the lake, draining my glass in a hearty gulp.

  To: littlea@gmail.com

  From: zazazelda@gmail.com

  Subject: Mademoiselle Pout

  October 1, 2014 at 12:45 AM

  Dearest Begrudgeful, Silent Sister,

  Don’t you think this a little silly, Ava? You really are milking the whole thing quite atrociously, as though we were still in high school. I mean, yes, it all goes back to high school, so perhaps you get SOME leeway for behaving like a hormonal hot mess, but surely with our blossoming maturity you can LET IT GO? If it makes any difference, I’ll get rid of him; just say the word.

  In other (frankly more interesting) news, our mother is a psycho. And a lush. Last night I had to scrape her out of the field, raving and half clothed, drinking a bottle of that atrocious Faux-jolais Nouveau that Dad insisted we try to manufacture, in spite of the fact that it always tastes like grapy horse piss. And yet, out of some dark-seated nostalgia, Nadine insists on reproducing it every year, as though this vintage will be drinkable. It’s like she thinks if she could just produce a bottle that was even a little palatable, Marlon would reappear, and she could sit on the deck and watch him work the fields, as ever. Her very own contadino.

  Anyway, last night she was yelping and sobbing, insisting that she wanted to return to the earth or somesuch. I think she was trying to make it down to the lake, quite possibly to throw herself in. One of these days I may just let her. But as it was, I gave her some of her “medicine” (what a useful euphemism for heavy-duty sedatives!) and dragged her back to bed, the whole while listening to her screech like a demented banshee. You can bet I poured myself a substantial tumbler of the good stuff. I’m not just being selfish: Her wee pills give her a respite, as well as me!

  Autumn has really dug in its heels; the leaves are leached of their chlorophyll and are whirligigging their way to the ground at an alarming rate. And Paris? I Googled photos of Les Tuileries to see what it looks like (that’s where we wanted to live when we were little, right? Though I can only assume you live near the garden, rather than in a fairy fortress within it, as previously planned), and it does seem very picturesque. Still, hard to beat the view from Silenus. The harvest was brutal; another year or two of this and I’ll be dribbling into my Riesling like Momma. We’ll see what we get out of it. I’m guessing it will be more of the same.

  But really, are you planning to not talk to me for the rest of forever? Or just until you wind up in bed with a chain-smoking, shrugging Parisian? Really, Ava, it’s not that big a deal, what happened. I’m over it. He’s over it. Weirdly, I find myself washing and changing your sheets on a regular basis. I barely even wash my own. What do you think that’s about?

  Your repentant, embryonic other half,

  Z is for Zelda

  —

  I bundle Nadine into bed, though I don’t lock the door behind her—Zelda wrote that she has started sleepwalking lately, but I can’t bring myself to lock her in. What if there’s another fire? After setting Marlon up in the guest room, I creep outside with a flashlight. Everything still smells of smoke, and I head toward the barn’s remains. It’s still warm; summers have been getting hotter and hotter here, though many of our die-hard Republican neighbors still refuse to comment on why this might be. Zelda speculated about what it would do for the grapes (“Did you know French Champagne growers are buying up real estate in the south of England? They’re predicting that the growing conditions will be more Champagne-esque than Champagne in twenty years! Do you think we’ll be, like, the next Chianti?”). I’m barefoot, so I make my way gingerly across the lawn, avoiding bits of burnt wood and other debris. I scan the flashlight over the area and finally squat down a few yards from where the barn doors would have been. There’s a small yellow flag poked into the burnt wood and ash. Shutting my eyes, I can see the structure perfectly; I imagine sliding open the heavy doors, padding my way across the cement floor where we kept all sorts of menacing farm equipment, and climbing up the steep ladder rungs to the loft.

  Marlon built the barn with some rustic fantasy of cramming the loft full of hay, keeping a few goats and sheep downstairs in the quaint mangers he constructed. But he left before we ever acquired either hay or critters to feed with it, and the barn became ad hoc storage for the ancient tractor and backup steel wine drums and random bits of equipment that weren’t used often. Zelda colonized the upstairs as her own stately pleasure den, insisting on loading books and furniture up through the hay chute in her teenage stubbornness. She had a few cast-off futons up there, a big worktable, some chairs, lots of ironic art (mainly featuring baby farm animals) that she had picked up at the Salvation Army in Ithaca. Even in her teens, she’d felt trapped in the house with our mother and had hidden out here whenever they fought. Used to watching her abandon projects, I observed her rehabilitation of the barn with surprise. It seemed terrifically unlike her.

  As high school ended, she began to invite people over to what she had started calling the Bacchus Barn (Zelda names everything). My mother would grit her teeth in passive-aggressive fury, staring out the window at the lights in the barn, the sound of music keeping us awake well into the night. Nadine never knew what to do with Zelda. Or this property.

  We had a collective story about how Silenus came to be, cobbled together from four different people with radically different narrative designs. The gist of it, the median account of that particular yarn, is this: My mother’s money paid for Silenus, though it was my father’s vision. Marlon was not the sort of man my mother usually went for; she liked very Waspy men, men who had been to law school and golfed on the weekends. Men who knew how to tie a variety of knots and always specified “Tanqueray” when they ordered a martini. Marlon Antipova, perennially relaxed and pathologically easygoing, all sun-weathered and full of vim, was the antithesis of what she always thought she had wanted in a partner. But when Nadine’s mother died after a lengthy, debilitating illness (Parkinson’s), leaving her an orphan, she pulled up stakes and moved to New York. At thirty-two, she had to decide what to do with herself and her money. When Marlon sauntered into that bar in the Village where she sat slurping gin and tonics and avoiding the silent, carpeted apartment she had rented on the Upper West Side, she saw escape, from herself and her past. She launched herself without blinking into a haphazard life with the adventurous Florida-born wanderer.

  My father was never a practical person, but he had aspirations: a dangerous combination. He gave an impressive impersonation of a vagabond bohemian, all the while zealously keeping his quiet ambitions just behind that convincing veneer of exceptional recklessness. I’ve spent quite a bit of time imagining that scene, so pivotal in our family story. A time when they wanted each other, when the future hadn’t barreled disastrously into their plans. Zelda and I used to tell the story to each other, handing off the narrative like a cadavre exquis.

  —

  I would always start: Marlon’s pickup pulled onto the graveled shoulder that would someday be the bottom of our driveway. The lake spread out below him and my mother, and Marlon crunched the truck to a halt as they neared the dusty For Sale sign drummed into the ground. A telephone number was written out in Sharpie ink, with no area code in front of the seven digits. Locals only, the sign was subtly suggesting.

  “Is this your grand surprise, then?” Nadine asked him, trying not to sound either disappointed or eager. She sought to remain impassive, to never betray what went on behind those cool blue eyes of hers. To neither lose her temper (as she was prone to do) nor reveal her excitement, her happiness, which was a new experience for her. Having spent the last few years watching her parents’ unsightly decline, she was free now, for the first time since early childhood. Still young(ish), with some money and self-determination, she could do whatever she pleased. And what pleased her most was this sly, smooth man with a ponytail and an easy smile. How strange that he would choose her, with her stiff manners and the tight kernel of anger she carried with
her. That he would go rapping, rapping on her apartment door at all hours of the night, and saunter into her bedroom with a bottle of bourbon and the southern drawl that he revealed, seemingly only for her, for moments of intense intimacy beneath her expensive down comforter. She had never allowed anyone so fully into her life, her inner world, and sometimes she would stare at Marlon in disbelief that he wanted her.

  Zelda would take over then, to explain our father: Marlon always pretended not to notice these guardedly fond moments but felt more confident in her attachment to him whenever he caught that intense, shrewd gaze. This woman was everything he wasn’t, everything he aspired to. She ordered drinks without looking at the menu—she knew what she wanted and was not particularly worried about price. There was never any question of whether she could afford it, whether the bill would arrive and she would come up short. Marlon had left behind a number of threatening business partners and outstanding debts (monetary and otherwise) in the swampy town of his childhood and had disappeared into the anonymous horde of penniless musicians here in New York out of necessity. He imagined a future where he would sit and look out at his own land. He had learned a word, years ago, pedigree, that he would sometimes, after five or six drinks, slosh around on his tongue. Nadine, who kept herself aloof and separate, and so rarely allowed him to know what went on in that inscrutable head of hers, was classy in a way that Marlon found hopelessly erotic. Her pale Irish skin reminded him of marble, and her ramrod posture of a statue. So different from the bronze, wiry girls he had tussled with as a young man, in smoky dive bars and tropical rainstorms.

  “It is grand, isn’t it?” He allowed a strand of black hair to fall across his face as he leaned across the cab toward her. “C’mon, you. Hop on out. I’ll give you the tour.” Nadine obliged, and Marlon snatched a picnic basket from the bed of the borrowed truck. With his other hand, he led her down into the field, tall with alfalfa and wildflowers. “They’re selling the whole property,” he finally said, watching Nadine’s face carefully as she assessed everything. He had learned not to push her too quickly or too hard; when she felt cornered, she balked, like some trapped wild animal. Nadine simply nodded her head, her eyes measuring each blade of grass with that sharpness he had come to expect. He spread out the picnic blanket and sprawled on it, popping the cork on the bottle of Champagne he had brought. It fizzed warmly, and they both leaned in to lap up the bubbly spill as it ran down the edge of the bottle.