Which brings us here. I can only imagine where you are now. Did you hold the service in the big house or the tasting room? Maybe you rented a tent, outside on the lawn (though I can only assume that if you did this, it would have to be out of sight of the wreckage of the barn, for decency’s sake). My best guess is that as a family, you elected to hold the little ceremony as close to the alcohol as possible, so I’d bet on the tasting room. I’m right, aren’t I?
I’ve been gambling all along. Or, rather, when I arranged all of this, I made a giant leap, put it all on black, or however that saying goes. (Maybe if I’d lived longer, gambling would be one of my vices—like it is for our father—but my short life was only able to truly embrace the small handful of depravities for which I’m best known.) I had to guess what you would do, and when. The what was easier than the when, naturally. But I have a feeling I got it right. Because I know you, twin mine, deep down in the places you barely know yourself. I’ve got you pegged.
So here we are. The DNA testing will come back eventually, even though the dental records are conclusive. (Did you call my dentist? Were you trying to figure out if he had something to do with it? I hope you did, and found all the fun detours there. But perhaps learning about Whitcross provided you with enough explanation to satisfy your wish fulfillment, your projection.) You’ve looked everywhere to avoid recognizing the truth, my little sister, second-born but first-named. In that, you are like our mother. And our father. Escape is what you seek, by any means available. Maybe you drink until you’re unconscious, maybe you run away from the people you love, to the opposite coast or to Paris. Maybe you look for any truth other than the one you’ve got, filling in the holes with any fiction that’s at hand. I know that of all of us Antipovas, I have uncovered the most long-term solution to our desire for escape. It’s hard not to feel like I’ve won, though I’ll spare you any posthumous gloating.
Oh, Ava. It’s so bizarre to write this, knowing that I’ll be gone when you finally read it. Thinking of you holding these eerie sheaves in your shaky palms gives me pause, and I almost want to go through with the disappearing act that you’ve been so cleverly uncovering these past few days. This whole adventure has been quite exciting—so zany, in fact, that I pretty quickly forgot that its conclusion is just fucking morbid. Part of me wants to be waiting in your apartment in Paris when you read this. But Paris was never going to be far enough to escape. You know that.
The pills weren’t just another piece of the game, you know. I’ll be taking a few fistfuls after I finish writing this. Jason is coming over soon; I texted him on phone number two, which I left lying around in plain sight at the Airstream. Phone number one is tucked safely away for you to find, with Gmail Delay Send all set up, ready to go, with timed emails for you to receive over the next few days. Jason is a shithead, and I’m partly hoping he’ll go down for my “murder.” Kayla’s got her instructional packet, and she’ll nudge things along as you get to the bottom of my little puzzle, keep things from going off the rails too thoroughly. She’s a sweet kid, and I think she won’t fuck it up. I told her to kick the drugs. It’s a terrible habit. The truth is really going to bum her out—guess you’re holding the bag for that one too!
After Jason leaves, I’ll lock the barn doors with the chain and padlock from the outside. Then I’ll crawl around to the big window out back, where I’ve left the rope ladder dangling, and I’ll climb up into the hayloft. I’ll swallow down a bunch of pills with Champagne. (Not the shit we make—something nice, for my last bottle. Is it ridiculous that that thought, the notion of a Last Bottle of Wine, gives me more pause than anything else?) I’m hoping to be completely unconscious, if not dead, by the time the candle burns all the way down and ignites the hay, which is pretty thoroughly soaked in gasoline, as are the very timbers. And then I’m hoping to be dead of overdose or smoke inhalation by the time the fire spreads to my chair by the window, looking out onto the lake and the stars. If not, hopefully the Vicodin/Xanax/Champagne cocktail will take the edge off being burned alive. It certainly takes the edge off being alive. Saint Joan once again.
I knew you wouldn’t believe it. I knew you would need to turn it into a complex game, a competition that you could somehow win by puzzling it out. So I made you a little story. Sister darling, the stories we tell ourselves! Maybe because we were twins, we sought a way to differentiate, to oh so rigorously sketch out our borders. You needed to say, to speak the ways you were different. I’m Ava, I’m the ambitious one; that’s Zelda, she’s the messy one. As though you could determine your own story, secure the ending you wanted through obsessive narration. Do you remember smoking pot on the deck, before shit went so wrong? We lay there, on the gigantic Pendleton blanket that our mother loved and that I unapologetically stole from the house. She flipped her shit so thoroughly when she couldn’t find it, but we convinced her she was having one of her paranoid episodes. (See, see how even a simple object has a story in our family?) We lay there, looking at the sky and smoking some of that lovely lovely weed, and you insisted on talking, telling me the way you were, summarizing your selfness with amazement. You said: “I’ve always known what I’ve wanted, I’ve had a desire, Zaza, to get somewhere. I’ve been jealous of you, with your waywardness and your directionality-lessness”—here you giggled at yourself, your words, your lack of words—“but when it comes down to it, that’s how I have to be, and you have to be how you have to be. It’s like together we make up all of a whole person.” And I asked you about Wyatt, if you knew what you wanted from him. And you paused, and you nodded, and you said: “I want him to believe in the story of myself.”
And he does, dear sister! That’s the loveliest bit. Wyatt lacks the imagination that would permit him to conjure up a conflicting tale about you. He swallows the myth whole, happily.
But for me. For me, I won’t be happy with the story until I know what the ending is. Till I know how the sentence ends. The ending has been torturing me, and I can’t live with that uncertainty. I can write the ending myself, dab the finishing touches on. I’ve gotten here, to the last letter. I could go on, keep writing. I would prefer not to.
I thought of including the whole alphabet here, with descriptions of the nitty-gritty, how I chose each letter and how I made it happen. But in the end, I want you to sculpt that story yourself. I want there to be mystery, letters you wonder about and never find. You don’t get to have perfect resolution. Not all letters arrive at their destination.
I hope it’s been easier for you, because I don’t want you to suffer inordinately. A little, perhaps. That’s why I’ve left you Mom. Think of it as a punishment, a penance, a performance of propitiation. Atone for your sins and help ease her out of the shell she’s been living in. Maybe join her. I’ve stockpiled enough for both of you. Or not. Crawl into Wyatt’s arms. Turn over my cellphone to the police. Tell everyone what really happened.
Maybe you’ll hate me for doing this, for this merry little chase. I accept that. But I didn’t want to just leave you. I wanted to give you back a piece of yourself. Maybe the piece that I always had. That I was. Now it’s just you, and what you want. I entered the world before you, and now I’ve left it first. You’ve never had the chance to see the world without me. You’re free now, Ava. All the decisions you make from here on out are yours. I love you.
Here we are, at the end.
Z is for Zelda
I sit on the bottom step for long minutes, reading and rereading Zelda’s last letter. I realize I should get up, but I can’t move. The only thing I can feel is a loud, resounding NO. No. Not this. This is not the end. I hear someone speaking loudly upstairs, and I realize that Marlon has arrived. Muted laughter greets something witty he has said. I pull out Zelda’s phone and flick through the emails of the past few days, inspecting the dates and times of each one. Abruptly, I stand up and collapse over one of the barrels near the staircase, emptying my stomach of fizzy liquid that tastes of creamy Chardonnay. I keep gagging well after there’s nothing
left to retch up. The sensation feels good, as though by reversing digestion I am reversing time, moving backward. Maybe if I crouch here vomiting long enough, I can go back to before the fire. Back to before I left Silenus. Back before Nadine got sick. Before Wyatt and Zelda, before college, before high school. Before Marlon left. How far back would I have to go, though, to right things? To that moment when Marlon gave us the wrong names, marking each of us as the person we would be for the rest of our lives? Maybe then.
I finally stand and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. With my other hand, I wipe beneath my eyes, where my mascara has surely ended up. I smooth my dress, perform all the rote gestures of composing myself. Following the rules, making sure I don’t create a scene. I head upstairs and quietly let myself into the room. Only a few heads turn to look at me; everyone else is watching Marlon. He is standing at the front of the room, telling the story of the first time he held Zelda in his arms, how she blustered and kicked, his feisty first-born child, though he thought she was second. I notice that he has a large picture of Zelda on an easel next to him; it’s a photograph from just over two years ago, one that I took. Zelda is standing down by the lake, half turned toward me, grinning mischievously. She’s wearing a loose caftan, and with the sunlight shining through it, you can clearly see the contours of her body, nymphlike and disconcertingly sexual. It’s a strange photo for Marlon to have chosen, but somehow it’s exactly right. We can see Zelda as she really was beneath the flimsy fabric, feral and wild, refusing to be tamed. I know that offscreen, I am holding the camera, clad in civilized trousers and a shirt with a bow, trying to capture her and failing.
—
Late that afternoon, people eventually trickle away. Marlon helps Nadine back to the house, and I am touched, watching them walk along the path between the house and the tasting room they built together, Nadine hobbling unsteadily and Marlon holding her up. Everything they made together is collapsing. I feel a deep pang of pity for them, these flawed human beings who made me, and who have created nothing but unhappiness for all of us. Of course, this is never what they wanted.
Kayla waits for me, but I dismiss her abruptly. The poor thing has no idea what she was in love with, or what she’s about to feel.
Wyatt touches my arm, and I flinch. I don’t want to talk to him now. I can’t look at him. If I do, I will break.
“Ava? You okay?” I don’t say anything, just continue staring out at the barn. The letter is still folded in my hand. I can’t seem to put it into my pocket. “Ava?” he repeats. I don’t look over at him. He waits for a few moments, but when I don’t respond, he sighs and turns around. I hear his steps across the wooden deck, and then I’m alone.
I stand on the deck for most of the afternoon’s remainder, thinking, staring. When the sun starts to fall into the lake, I shake off my inertia and walk to the big house. I head upstairs to my mother’s bedroom, where Zelda has left the pills. My mother is downstairs on the couch, watching a movie. Marlon is outside reading. I get what I need and come back down.
“Mom.” She doesn’t look up at first. “Mom. There’s something I want to show you.” She stares up at me blankly, uncomprehendingly. “Take a walk with me.” Precariously, she stands. Her eyes are unfocused and seem to twitch back and forth. I’ve seen them do this before.
“Zelda, I’ve had it with your performances. I’m tired. Go ask your father to watch.”
“This is a surprise just for you, Mom. You and me. You’ll see.”
She shakes her head reluctantly, but I hold on to her arm and guide her out the door. She’s still wearing her espadrilles from earlier. Good. That’s good. Painstakingly, we make our way down the hill to the lakefront. Moving at Nadine’s pace, it takes us a long time, and the sun is dipping faster than I thought it would. When we finally reach the water, Nadine is irritable and tired, and she keeps trying to turn around and head back to the house. But I nudge her farther.
At the lakefront, I let go of her arm and fetch the rowboat beached on the stones at the edge. I shove it toward the water, carving furrows into the pebbles. When the hull is in the water, I gesture to Nadine, who hesitates but then steps forward, almost eagerly. She is so light that I almost lift her into the boat, and she sits down on the bench, rocking. I hop in and shove off from the shore with a paddle. I feel a splinter dig into the pad of one finger as I awkwardly try to angle the boat toward the center of the lake.
“Sunset cruise, Momma. It’s the perfect night for it.”
“Zelda, are you sure this is a good idea? This boat seems rather…” Nadine trails off uncertainly, looking back at the shore with concern. The sun is halfway behind the hills that line the lake, and the temperature on the surface of the water is dropping quickly. Though I’m sweaty from the exertion, I shiver. “Zelda?” Nadine says again, querulously.
“No, Mom. I’m not Zelda. I’m Ava.”
26
Zelda’s words ricochet through my head as I tug inexpertly at the oars. She fills me entirely and she is all I feel, in the emptiness of this lake, of myself. The boat is unwieldy, and I am in desperately bad physical condition. I’m barely even thinking about what I’m doing. I can’t think about what I’m doing, or about what has happened, has been happening. Nadine is hunkered down on the bench opposite me, staring wide-eyed at the surface of the water. It’s a dark complex magenta, catching the sunset in its final moments. My breath comes harder and starts to hitch in my throat as I strain, pulling the boat deeper and deeper into Seneca Lake. I haven’t had a fully conscious thought since I opened Zelda’s letter, and I feel as though I’m not even making choices any longer. Instinctively, I want to put distance between myself and the vineyard, to have a body of water between us. Fleeing across the water, again. The rickety rowboat is proving to be more shipshape than I thought. Zelda. Zelda.
“Mom,” I say softly. I stop rowing, letting the boat coast. My mother turns her wobbly head toward me. “Mommy. What happened to your sister?” At first she doesn’t answer. When she does, her words drag.
“It was an accident. There was nothing I could do.”
“What happened on the beach that day?”
“I don’t remember,” she says, her voice so small that it’s almost as though she has transformed into the eight-year-old she was. I sit silently, watching the angry sun drop swiftly behind the black hills that rim the lake. I can see the fireflies winking from the trees along the shore that we have left behind. In the dark, it’s almost hard to tell which is our dock, which sloping hill has consumed so much of our family. Down the lake, close to Watkins Glen, a large boat cruises north, furiously lit up with fairy lights. It looks like a steamboat from the glory days of boat travel, resplendently anachronistic. Tourists on a booze cruise, eating overcooked crab legs that have been flown in frozen from Alaska.
“Dad was drunk, as usual,” Nadine continues with a shrug, and she trails a finger in the water. “That day, he was just raving. Drinking out of the bottle. He passed out in the sun. Snoring. And Nina said we should sneak off and swim out farther than we were usually allowed.”
“You didn’t go in with her?” I ask, trying not to blame.
“No. I was scared,” my mother says bitterly. “The waves were big that day. I watched Nina’s head bob up and down, and she turned back to wave every now and again. She was too far out. She disappeared into the water, while I watched. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t follow her in. I watched.” She leans over the edge of the boat and smacks the water with her palm, making a violent slapping noise. I’m worried that her movement might sink the boat, but I say nothing, afraid to interrupt her story. Did Zelda know?
“Jesus.” I breathe deeply. Something is happening far back in my throat.
“I would have been a different person, you know. If she had lived. I would have been different. A different mother. Zelda—she reminded me so much of Nina.” We’re silent in the boat, listening to the faint slap of water along the hull.
“You know, you can s
tart all kinds of relationships in your life,” Nadine continues. “But you only start life once. And you start it with a limited number of people. Those people, they do something to you.”
Whatever is in my throat loosens, and I start to cry. At first, tears ooze from my eyes, and I whimper, my back hunched. I sob. Oh God, Zelda. But soon I’m not crying, I’m not weeping. Something is trying to claw its way out of me. I cling to the oars and scream, letting myself lurch between hysteria and rage. I kick the bottom of the boat. My arms fold across my belly, which aches from the muscular exertion of my tears. I cry like a toddler, inconsolable, thrashing, for solid minutes. Zelda, no. Please don’t. Some irrational, wordless part of my brain begs. Begs something nameless for something I can easily name. Please don’t let her be dead. Pleasepleasepleaseplease. I am perfectly fixed on one thought, more precisely concentrated on one thing than I have ever been in my life: a denial of her death. She cannot be dead. Cannot. And, quite simply, she is.
Dead Letters Page 33