by Natalie Lund
Golden Girl passes the cemetery and the impound lot where the Pontiac still sits, glistening abalone in the moonlight.
In the country, the turbines are motionless, but they pulse red, warning off airplanes and scaring birds. Stadium lights illuminate Heinrich’s Haunted Maize Maze, and the teens hear intermittent screams, the buzz of a chain saw, the barks of coyotes.
There’s a sense that Brenna, Callie, and Joshua are time traveling, heading into a before-time kind of darkness. Golden Girl’s headlights carve their path. But in the rearview mirror, they can see the present—bright and blinking.
At the roadside memorial, Brenna pulls onto the shoulder and leads them into the field, lighting their way with her cell phone. The stalks are golden and dry, ready to be cut for the winter. They stop near the center of the field. Brenna pulls up the opening scene of the movie on her phone, and they watch Audrey Hepburn walking down the street, in her sleek gown and sunglasses, with her pastry and coffee, white scarf fluttering over her arm. The movie is on mute, and they listen to the breeze hissing the dry tassels.
We can imagine picnic blankets, rickety lawn chairs, rows of cars around them. A wide whitewashed wall as the screen. The smell of popcorn, of cinnamon and sugar, of rain and lightning. Us, laughing and chatting and loving and living.
The night is cold, but stormless, and they’re wearing coats, gloves, and hats. Joshua holds Brenna’s phone while she finds her lighter. She’s brought the candle from the warehouse and positions it on the ground between them. They hold hands and huddle close, to protect it from the breeze. They keep it simple, but ritualistic—a ceremony, a service, a séance.
“Thank you,” Callie says.
“Goodbye,” Joshua says.
“Be at peace,” Brenna says.
Thank you. Goodbye. Be at peace.
Thank you. Goodbye. Be at peace.
They repeat their lines again and again, until it sounds like a chant. They watch the flame, a tiny pinprick of light at their feet. Finally they fall silent.
We fight to be heard. At first, our whispers are soft and breathy, but we crescendo like crickets in the summer.
You will be okay. You are okay, we tell them. We are too.
Thank you.
The sound of the voices became a waterfall—not Niagara-violent but steady and calming, filling Callie’s ears until she could hear nothing else. Callie had a feeling this was the last time she’d hear the voices, that she’d search her whole life, hiking up mountains and following streams for this exact sound.
All their names—the loved ones and lost souls of Mercer—chanted over and over: Erma Thomas. Luke Winters. Gordon Fife. Sally Jordan. Chester Lewis. Dorothy Healy. Jeanette Gillespie. Stephen Turner. Edward Milton. Delores Tanner. Celeste Vidal. Warren Worley. Trudy Miller. Eleanor Peterson Vidal. And on. And on. And on.
Of course, one name thrummed in Callie’s heart. It was for the woman with pulled-cotton hair and crystalline eyes that Callie said thank you. It was because of Mrs. Vidal that Callie had the courage to be present in her mother’s final days; to feel the weight of her mother in her arms, her grip on Callie’s hand, her mechanized breathing on the back of Callie’s neck; to participate in conversations, brief and sometimes confused, but hers to keep.
Catherine Keller. Catherine Keller. Catherine Keller, Callie thought, and soon the voices took up the name, whispering it back to her. Her mother’s name. A breath on the wind, forever a part of Callie, forever a part of Mercer.
Goodbye.
Joshua once asked his grandfather about the night of the tornado. His grandfather remembered crouching in the storm cellar with his parents. He could hear the tornado, knew that it was close and dangerous. But what his grandfather remembered most clearly was the feeling that all the air in the cellar, in his lungs, was being sucked away from him. Now the voices around Joshua felt like the opposite, like being filled with air—enough to lift off and float away.
If Joshua concentrated on the voices, picking a thread and following it through, he heard encouragements. It gets better. Be yourself. Anchor yourself in history, yet sail forward. Take courage. The power is yours. Don’t let them get you down.
When words become as used and worn as a child’s blanket, do they cease to have meaning? he wondered. Or are they more powerful? Do they make you stronger?
Joshua did feel stronger, as though he’d redrawn himself in Mercer, darkened his outline, filled himself in. Joshua, as himself, was possible because of the queer people before him, the Eddies and Lukes and so many more, who hurt and loved and struggled and succeeded and died and lived happily and were invisible and visible both.
Discover new landscapes, the voices said.
Joshua nodded. He would, for himself, and for Luke.
Be at peace.
Inside, Brenna didn’t feel peace, exactly. Instead she felt something live-wire bright and humming—electricity in her gut where there had once been a magnet. The pull replaced by a pulse. But the feeling was a comfort. It was desire—to live and write and love—and maybe that was her own brand of peace. She clutched her notebook, felt her heart beating against it.
She wished peace for Dot, who’d carried her hurt for as long as she was alive, as long as she was dead. She wished it for all the Storm Spirits, and, if she listened carefully to the voices, she thought she could hear apologies, confessions, stories.
Emma, thank you for sitting near me that day at recess so long ago. Daddy, we will never come to an understanding. I don’t want or need you. Luke, I am so sorry I never got a chance to tell you that I love you. Frederic, I will always remember meeting you at the train station, standing beside your trunk, lost, and I knew—just knew—that you were my future. Mama, I was so proud to be your daughter; I never wanted to hurt you.
Brenna squeezed her friends’ hands, and they squeezed back. She’d tell their stories, all their stories, and bring them what peace she could.
* * *
* * *
In time, the voices quieted, the candle wavering as though it had been fueled by their breath. Then, in silence, the flame snuffed out.
Still, Callie, Joshua, and Brenna stood, hand in hand in hand, as the world continued to spin.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my agent, Sarah Davies, for believing in me and finding a good home for this novel. To the entire team at Philomel Books and Penguin Random House, thank you for your guidance and expertise. Thanks to Mark Oshiro for being a shrewd reader. And thank you, especially, to my editor, Liza Kaplan, for incredible insight and for loving Joshua, Brenna, and Callie as much as I do.
I’m deeply grateful to the Purdue University MFA program for welcoming me into its writing community and to all my workshop companions for their clear-eyed critiques as this book was born. Thank you, especially, to my teachers throughout the years: Maxine Clair, Peter Marks, Faye Moskowitz, Patricia Henley, Porter Shreve, Bich Minh “Beth” Nguyen, Chinelo Okparanta, Janet Alsup, Sharon Solwitz, and my thesis adviser, Brian Leung. You challenged me to be truer to myself.
Thank you to the fierce and brave women who stood by my side as I grew into a writer: Priya Ramanathan, Emily Ryder Perlmeter, Justine Williams, Maria Maldonado, Denise Varughese, Rhiannon Killian, Kyrlyn Chatten, Megan Gibbs, Sarah Murphy Traylor, and Kelsey Ronan. And to my forever wolf pack—Julie Henson, Bethany Leach, Katie McClendon, Rebecca McKanna, and Emily Skaja—thank you for giving this book its heart.
I’m grateful to my family—Mary and Charles Lund, Frances Lund and Troy Randall, Jennifer Lund and Dan Ross, Gus and Maxine Ross, Julie Lund and Jonathan Wheaton, Owen and Cora Wheaton, and the Acevedos—for their unwavering support. I’m proud to have been shaped by your hands.
Thank you to my husband, Johnny Acevedo, for all the love and encouragement. You fortify me every day.
And finally, to the town that raised me, your ghosts are always jus
t beneath my skin.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Natalie Lund (natalielund.com) is a former middle and high school teacher. A graduate of Purdue University's MFA program, she taught introductory composition and creative writing there, and also served as the fiction editor of The Sycamore Review. Natalie lives in Chicago with her husband. You can follow her on Twitter @nmlund.
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