Dead Letters

by Caite Dolan-Leach

  Clothed in a lightweight shift dress and sandals, I scuttle out of the house again. The day is heating up, and I consider taking the truck to Zelda’s trailer, but that seems absurd, so I walk, dust coating my feet and ankles. My hair is drying into a strange frizzy creature with a life of its own. The door of the trailer sticks briefly, and I nudge it open with my shoulder. Heat gusts out. It is stuffy inside and smells overly ripe, stale. I open a few windows and light a stick of incense before settling onto Zelda’s bed and hunting through her usual hiding places, the dark crannies of her home.

  Thirty minutes later, I’m left with a few wads of cash and a dildo but no more drugs. I’m baffled. Zelda typically hoarded a pharmacy: uppers, downers, hallucinogens. So far, I’ve not even been able to find a joint squirreled away in any of her usual spots. Something niggles at me, something I’ve ignored or overlooked. Would she have hidden something in her bedroom? I doubt it—there aren’t enough hollow places, not enough surfaces to be pulled back in order to reveal what’s underneath.

  With a jolt, I remember the letter we found on Wyatt’s truck. I fish it out from my bag and look at the cryptic final sentence: Underneath these carefully constructed surfaces we conceal our missing pieces. The letter U, for something concealed underneath a constructed surface. Not unlocked, after all.

  I walk outside to the deck, Zelda’s long-ago summer project, jump off the edge, and peer below. There’s a tiny crawl space beneath it, and I’m just able to cram myself in. I inch along, scanning. In the corner, I see a zip-lock bag taped where two pieces of wood meet, lurking like a spider’s tight ball of eggs. I tug it down and edge back out from beneath the deck.

  A playful hand has labeled the bag with permanent ink: U found U!

  Inside, I find Zelda’s variety show of mind-altering substances. A bag with some pot (it smells like the terrifically strong stuff they grow locally), a depleted eight ball of coke. Mom’s name is on a few prescription bottles: codeine for the rheumatism in her hands, some more clonazepam. The only prescription in Zelda’s name is for Ritalin, and the bottle is mostly untouched. I wonder if she was selling the tablets; Zelda certainly doesn’t need any more energy. There’s no sign of any pills like the others my mother takes, nothing that indicates Zelda was ever diagnosed. Then I remember that she mentioned stealing prescription pads from Whitcross—she wouldn’t have needed a diagnosis for the medications.

  But there’s nothing in her name. No SSRIs, no meds to help neurological symptoms like tremors and shakes. Maybe she wasn’t certain enough of her self-diagnosis to forge a prescription. She was paranoid, for sure, but probably very aware of the fact that paranoia and delusions are symptoms of dementia.

  As I pull out one of the last bottles, a piece of paper tumbles from the bag. Zelda’s handwriting.

  What’s missing, sweet sister mine?

  I frown. Well, the rest of the alphabet, obviously. What can she mean? How on earth would I know what isn’t here? I crumple up the paper and sit back on the deck. She sent me snooping around her stash. And she wants me to look for something that’s supposed to be here. She has every pharmaceutical under the sun, except for the ones I came looking for. Does she know I came hunting for proof of her illness? Or does she want me to look for something else?

  In irritation, I take the bags back out and sift through the semitranslucent orange vials again. I read where each prescription was filled, look at every name. I check for generic as well as brand name. I have no idea what she wants from me. I uncrumple the note and read it again. This time, I flip it over and see that she has written on the back too.

  You’ll find it in Mom’s room, where it ultimately belongs.

  Still doesn’t mean anything to me, but at least I know where to go looking. I pack all the pills into the grubby bag again and slap it back into the corner of the crawl space. I leave the Airstream and mosey on toward the house, thinking.

  I pad inside, where it is cooler, and take a long drink of water from the tap, not bothering to fetch a glass. The sort of thing that Nadine hates. Usually, I do too. I head upstairs, prepared to dodge everybody again, but Marlon is asleep on the balcony in a patio chair, and I don’t see Opal. Mom is sitting in her chair, staring blankly down at the water with a flaccid expression. She doesn’t even blink. For a second, I am certain that she’s dead, but then she tilts her head slightly at the sound of my footsteps, and I let out a breath that is maybe not quite as relieved as it should be.

  “Mom, come inside,” I whisper, trying not to wake Marlon. Nadine purses her lips and continues staring. “Mom. You’ll get sunburned.” She doesn’t even bother shaking her head, just looks off into the distance, at the vines she grew. Or, rather, paid other people to grow. I’m about to fight with her when I realize I just don’t care. I’ll bring her a hat later.

  Her room is cool and dark, and the fan has been left on. I realize with a jolt what a terrible caretaker I’ve been during the last few days, how I’ve relied on Marlon and Opal to deal with her. All the while carrying a chip on my shoulder because I’ve been saddled with her. If my father and grandmother hadn’t been here, Nadine would still be in her dirty nightgown, rolling around in her musty sheets without having eaten breakfast or taken her medications. Zelda has been doing this every day for two years. Jesus.

  My phone vibrates. I tear at my pocket, trying to reach it, assuming it’s Zelda, that she’s somehow intuited my presence here in this room. But there’s nothing—no message, no email. I realize that it was actually my own phone buzzing at me and see a text from Nico.

  I am at the bar across Hotel Victoires. Looking for your twin I assume. I will call if I will see her. Please call me.

  I slide the phone back into my pocket. I will. I will. But first I need to find whatever Zelda has squirreled away up here. Maybe she meant that she was taking Mom’s dementia drugs? When Nadine was first diagnosed and we were just getting used to the daily regimen of fistfuls of meds with unpronounceable names, we called them her Forget-Me-Nots. I prowl around the room, checking in the twin nightstands next to the bed first. Everything in the room has a double: one for Nadine and one for Marlon. Two nightstands, one on either side of the bed, two tasteful laundry hampers next to each other near the bathroom, two reading chairs in opposite corners, with matching throws draped artistically over their winged backs. Nadine never redecorated, but she had at least begun to occupy the dresser and closet that had once been Marlon’s. She kept some of her own books on his nightstand. Still, there was lopsidedness to the room, like a limb that’s been in a cast displayed next to its healthy partner. Nadine fully occupied only one half of the room.

  I check the bathroom, where the bizarre array of prescription bottles is lined up along the edge of the medicine cabinet. I don’t recognize all of them; Nadine has fresh infantry in the battle against her own rotting brain. I scan the names. Next I go over to the bed and look at her pill dispenser—or, rather, her massive pill dispenser, divided into the seven days of the week, then further divided into the three meals of the day. I’ve been disbursing her meds from this container, which someone (presumably Zelda) stocked before the fire. Twenty-one compartments, all crammed with medications that she chokes down in tiny increments. The dispenser is nearly empty. I shake it, and there are only five compartments still filled with pills—through tomorrow. Fuck. Did I get that list of meds from Dr. Whitcross? What did I do with it? I sigh as I start to contemplate the task of hunting down all the pills, refilling prescriptions. It could take all afternoon. I drop to my hands and knees, hoping to find a list written out in the nightstand, but instead I come upon another dispenser, nearly full. I pick it up in surprise. It’s another week’s worth of medication. Has it been here all along?

  I flip open the lid, expecting to see the rainbow jumble of pills that look too big for any human being to force down their throat, but that’s not what I find. In the first compartment, there are only eight familiar-looking pills, all with a distinctive V printed on them. The mis
sing letter V. I take one out and hold it up. I know these pills. Zelda and I discovered them as college freshmen, when I had my wisdom teeth removed. It had been hellishly painful, and I walked out of the pharmacy clutching a slender tube of Vicodin. Zelda took half of them, and we spent a couple of days in a blissful state of painlessness, dreamily watching movies on the couch and occasionally giggling over my appearance, with my swollen chipmunk cheeks and dilated pupils. We managed to finagle two refills from the dentist before he cut us off, and Zelda promptly resolved to get her teeth out too. I imagine the dental records from that surgery were the ones she had bribed the coroner to use in order to falsely identify her body. I wonder if there is a way to tell Kayla Richardson’s mother not to wait up for her daughter without incriminating myself. Maybe Kayla is still out there, though. I remember that she works for the funeral home—maybe she’s helping? Maybe she and Zelda are hiding in someone’s off-grid yurt less than ten miles from here. Maybe someone else is dead in the barn, someone whose mother hasn’t missed them.

  I toss a Vicodin into my mouth and crack open the next compartment in the drug dispenser. These are not Vicodin. They are the missing Xanax, of course, the ones I’d been looking for the second time I went to Zelda’s trailer. It had surprised me then that she didn’t have any. This must be what she meant. These were the missing drugs from her hidey-hole. It should have been painfully obvious, like looking into my mother’s fridge and finding only salads and fresh-cooked meals and not a single bottle of white wine or vodka stuffed deep into the freezer behind the ice-bitten peas. How could I not think of it? Of course, I did think of it, that second day in the trailer. My brain is sluggish. I am forgetful.

  I cradle the dispenser in my lap, staring at the Vicodin and Xanax nestled next to each other, a cozy cocktail that could easily dispatch someone’s worldly concerns. This was obviously not supposed to be Nadine’s medication for tomorrow and the next few days. I flip open all twenty-one compartments and find only Vicodin and Xanax, alternating for the entire week. Something about this makes me very nervous, and I’m not quite sure why.

  I open all the drawers of the nightstand, rummaging through them. Maybe there’s another dispenser and this is just the recreational one that helps keep Nadine and Zelda even-keeled. Instead, I find a bag of empty prescription bottles. I dump it out onto the floor. All prescribed to Zelda Antipova. Vicodin and Xanax, probably ten bottles altogether, dating back months. Different doctors have prescribed them, from as far away as Geneva. The last few are from Whitcross—the missing prescription pad. Why would she keep them all? And here, out in the open? Part of me knows, but I can’t quite let that thought gain traction. It’s something we’ve talked about before, but something I can’t really contemplate.

  Only Zelda never did care for subtlety, and she’s not about to embrace it now. She refuses to run the risk of being misunderstood.

  23

  Well, sister mine,

  Part of you knew this is where we would end up, that this was the whole point. We talked about it once, do you remember, when Mom first got sick? We even tried to bring it up with her, though that conversation went appallingly wrong. Ultimately, I think, she might have agreed to it, but around that time she was re-entrenching every time we suggested a bloody thing and was violently dismissive of anything either of us could think up. Gentle hints that she might want to eat some solid food or put on pants were met with full-on hysterics. She said I probably couldn’t be relied on to follow anything through, and she barely trusted me to do her laundry, let alone see her off gently into that good night. But you’re the good sister! Angelic, Accountable Ava! Always available to do the Right Thing. Until you weren’t. Until a lifetime of enacting your dutiful dharma collapsed beneath your overwhelming desire to just get the fuck outta Dodge and live your life. Which I understood. I did, Little A. I was pissed and hurt and felt abandoned, but boy oh boy did I get it. Who wouldn’t want to flee this moribund place? I give it back to you now. Waltz, you dark and jaded nymph, through these quiet gardens of excessive, balmy peace! Snort.

  But what you have in front of you is your penance. Just because the choice you made was utterly understandable doesn’t mean that you’re off the hook for it. You have some making up to do, missy. And, honestly, I kind of feel like I got the long end of the stick on this one. SO. Without further ado, Ava my dear, here is what your future holds (though I think you have a pretty good inkling):

  a) You have in front of you a veritable pharmakon. These puppies offer you salvation, dearest sister, and all you have to do is…

  b) Administer them. Nadine will hold out her shaky gnarled hands, those gigantic, expensive rings rattling around on her skeletal digits, and she’ll toss back her head and swallow it down. (Do you remember that Alanis Morissette CD? God, I just thought of that.)

  c) You’ll hand out these little ingestibles in the proper order—that is, alphabetically. (Of course!) A fistful of Vicodin, followed by a fistful of Xanax. (You’re getting two letters at once! Twins!) Wait a bit, lather, rinse, repeat, until blessed unconsciousness ensues. My feeling, based on some very flimsy research, is that this combo is more likely to prove lethal than, say, an overdose of heroin. I think. At least Wikipedia says so. And Mom’s squeamish about needles. And I’m low on smack. So.

  d) Even if it is no more effective than some other pharmaceuticals, it’s at least much easier to explain to the authorities, who will come sniffing around eventually.

  e) When they do (come sniffing), they’ll learn that I’ve been collecting Vicodin and Xanax for months, stockpiling it and storing it (perhaps foolishly) in Our Demented Mother’s bedroom. It would seem that I kept many of them in a pill dispenser by the bed, which certainly calls my judgment into (further) question. A halfway decent psychiatrist will suggest that this is a classic unconscious Electra complex, and that I was subconsciously laying the groundwork for my mother’s death (Damn that Clytemnestra!).

  f) You will cry and look grief-stricken and shocked. You will blame yourself for not being more attentive, not monitoring her closely enough at night, not making sure everything in her bedroom was safe, for getting too drunk. But you’re still so shaken up by the death (murder!) of your twin sister, and—and—

  g) And they’ll write it up as an accidental death, eventually. The insurance people will fork out. Then you’ll be free, darling sister! Free of Mom, free of debt, free to do as you please! For a moment or two, at least.

  I wish I’d had the guts to do it myself, and I’m still wondering why I couldn’t go through with it. The night of the fire, I sat there on the edge of the bed, the pills in my lap, planning to finish everything up after all. Thinking back to that evening, one of the last few with the three of us, all semilucid, talking about this. But I always knew that it couldn’t be me. You’re the right one for the job, Little A! You can do it!

  I suggest you burn this note. Obvs.

  Love,

  Who else,

  Zelda

  I fold up the handwritten letter that lined the bottom of the bag and lean back against the bed. I pop another Vicodin into my mouth and close my eyes. I should have known that Zelda wouldn’t be able to walk away without punishing me. I snap the compartments of the pill dispenser firmly shut and tuck the whole thing into the nightstand, nestled behind a book. One of the twinned Afghan rugs that flank both sides of the bed scratches me through the thin fabric of my dress. I sit there, waiting to feel the first cozy swoop of the Vicodin before standing up.

  Of course I have a clear memory of that night, not long after Nadine was diagnosed, when we sat around the kitchen table, glasses in hand. Trying to be as pragmatic as possible. I have tried not to think about it.

  —

  “What would you want, Zaza?”

  “I’d want you to off me the minute my hands were too shaky for me to drink out of a fucking martini glass,” she had snorted. “But that’s me. I tread this world lightly!”

  “What about Mom? What would
she want?”

  “I don’t know, Ava. I just don’t.”

  —

  Now I go over to Nadine’s closet, which is crammed full of clothes while Marlon’s stands empty, in anticipation. From the top shelf above the dress rack I pull down a hatbox and remove a beautiful, wide-brimmed straw hat in pale cream, with a black silk band. I have always loved this hat. I remember visiting Opal in Florida, for one of our last family vacations together, and watching my mother walk barefoot on the beach in this hat. There was a violent pink sunset dying behind her, and she wore a buttoned cover-up that would have looked too formal for the beach on anyone else but suited her perfectly. She didn’t have a glass in her hand, for once. She didn’t need one; she was alone, without Marlon or Opal or Zelda or me. She looked serene, and I crouched near a sand dune to watch her burrow her toes into the low tide and dislodge a sand dollar. She squatted on the beach to pick it up and stayed poised on her haunches in a surprisingly athletic pose, holding her prize and looking out over the water. Maybe nostalgia and my desperate need for a perfect memory add this last detail in, but I remember a school of dolphins bursting out of the waves nearby, skating through the rosy water.

  I sniff my mother’s hat, smelling for a trace of her hair before she was taking so many medications, before she stank of age. But I smell only the box it has been stored in. I project the fragrance of sand and salt water onto it, such vivid scents that they are easy to imagine, and I think briefly that I should take my mother to the ocean, to Cape Cod, where she grew up. I could put her in a chair by the water and let her dig her toes into the sand there, bring her a glass of wine and a plate of baked clams, remind her of where we are when she looks puzzled and angry. Maybe we could talk about her sister, Nina, help her heal after a lifetime of refusing to acknowledge her death. Maybe we could sit there, cathecting together.