Love Letters to the Dead (25 page)

“I know, Laurel. But staying together is not always the best thing when you can’t be good for each other. Everything doesn’t always work out exactly how we want it to.”

“No kidding. Don’t you think by now I’ve figured that out?”

I could hear Mom start to cry.

“No, Mom, please don’t cry. Forget it, okay? It’s fine. I have to go.”

When I hung up, Dad walked in. “Hey, sweetie,” he said. “Are you all right?”

I stared straight ahead and tried to wipe the tears away. “I hate her.”

“No, Laurel, you don’t mean that. I know you’re angry, and that’s okay. But you don’t hate her.”

I shrugged. “I guess.”

I looked at Dad’s shoulders, hunched over, and his face that was fighting to stay neutral. I think he was searching for something more to say, but when he couldn’t find anything, instead he came over and gave me a half nelson, like he used to when I was a kid. I knew this was meant to make me laugh, so I did my best.

You grew up so fast, River. But maybe the little boy who needed someone to protect him never went away. You can be noble and brave and beautiful and still find yourself falling.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear Janis Joplin,

When you were alive you acted tough, shouting and drinking and singing your heart out. Giving it to everyone. All your fans. But the edge was too close. Your manager came to the hotel to find you one day when you missed your recording session. He saw your Porsche out front, painted bright and bold and psychedelic, with a night sky and a bright day, a land over the rainbow, a butterfly. The car was just there waiting, ready to go. But inside your hotel room, you were dead, sixteen days after Jim Morrison. The dream of the rock stars was ending. The dream of the sixties—where everything seemed possible, where there was everything and more to explore—didn’t make sense anymore. The beautiful, the brave, were burning up. You had believed that the world could change. And then yours ended. An overdose of heroin. Some booze. It was an accident, everyone assumed.

I still love you, but I’m starting to realize that it’s not a coincidence. That the people I most admire, the ones who seemed to be able to use their bodies, their voices, to fight away the fear, you didn’t win, not really, in the end. It’s gotten harder to write these letters, and maybe that’s why.

But I wanted to tell you the only good news that I have had in a while, which is that Kristen got in to Columbia. For a congratulations present, Tristan baked her a cake with a New York City skyline that he drew on it with frosting, which I thought might have been the nicest thing ever. When we all met in the alley after school to celebrate, he cut the cake and passed it around. Natalie kissed Hannah’s fake-bruised cheekbone and fed her bites of frosting. Tristan was smoking a cigarette in the middle of eating his and saying, “You’re my big city girl, right, babe?” Kristen nodded and smiled a half-sad smile. “Right, babe.”

Graduation is less than two months away. Afterward, Tristan is going to community college here. He already has an apartment picked out that he’s going to move into this summer. And he got a job delivering for Rex’s Chinese. They say that they are going to stay together, but they both know that they won’t. She’s leaving him, and he’s happy for her, as much as he can be. Next year, he’ll probably have a new girlfriend. A college girlfriend. Probably she’ll have blond hair and her eyes won’t stay still like Kristen’s. They’ll dance all around a room, and he’ll miss the way Kristen looked at things, the way she looked at him, like there was nothing else to see.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear Amy Winehouse,

Aunt Amy asked me if I wanted to go to the mall with her today to get some spring clothes, including a dress for Easter, which is coming up tomorrow. She said she was thinking we’d have an aunt-niece day, like a mother-daughter day, I guess. I wasn’t in the mood, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so I agreed.

We were in JCPenney, and I was browsing the tops, when she came back with an armful of dresses for me to try on, all of them too lacy and too long. I don’t know how she even found so many church dresses in a department store, but she must have left the juniors’ section, that’s for sure.

When I came out of the dressing room to show her the first one, she looked at me in the mirror under the fluorescent lights. “You’re so beautiful,” she said, but she said it like it scared her.

I shrugged.

Then she said, “Be careful, Laurel.” And out of nowhere she started to cry.

I put my arms around her, trying to make her better. I was shivering in the dress, the too-early air conditioner making goose bumps all over.

Finally Aunt Amy wiped her eyes on her flowered blouse and smiled at me. I wanted to get out. I didn’t try on my other dresses. I just said I wanted the one I had on, with the long white sleeves and buttoned-up top.

So she paid for the dress and we went to have lunch. The smell of the food court in the mall is like an indoor version of the state fair. I got what I usually get—a Hot Dog on a Stick and lemonade. We sat near the fake trees under the white light from the skylight, where Mom and May and I used to sit. Aunt Amy looked at me picking the batter off the corn dog.

She said, trying to be casual, “So, do you have any crushes? A boyfriend?” As if she hadn’t practically forbidden me from talking to any member of the male species. I wondered if this was a trick. I never told her about Sky, because I didn’t want her freaking out about it. I shook my head no.

“Well, that’s for the best…” And with that she trailed off. She picked back up with, “You know, I am very proud of you. Your mother is, too.”

I swallowed hard, the corn batter stuck in the back of my throat. I didn’t believe that Mom had actually said that. But I guessed that she’d probably told Aunt Amy about our fight, and Aunt Amy was likely trying to smooth things over. I know I should call Mom and apologize, but instead I’ve been avoiding it for the past two weeks.

I didn’t want to get into all of that, so I just tried to smile. “Thanks,” I said. I couldn’t imagine what exactly Aunt Amy was proud of anyway, unless it was the fact that I didn’t have a boyfriend, which is only the case because I got dumped.

Then Aunt Amy asked me, “Do you remember my friend who I went on the pilgrimage with?” She couldn’t keep herself from grinning. “He’s coming into town next week.”

She went on explaining, and what I got is that after all those months of not calling, the Jesus Man called Aunt Amy last week to tell her he was coming to visit. I guess they’ll go to dinner at Furr’s, and I will tell her she looks pretty before she leaves and pretend to be asleep when she gets home so she can do whatever God wills her to do with him.

Honestly, it makes me sad. Because she sent him cookies, and cards, and New Mexico chili, and messages, especially the messages where she would do the voices of Mister Ed and of the Jamaican bobsledders and she would be herself. Her hopeful self, like she was saying,
I’m here
.

But for the past year, she got no response, and finally she stopped pressing her flowered dresses like she imagined someone was about to see her in them. She put her rose soap back in its box and back on the shelf where she’d never use it. She finally gave up.

And now she will take her rose soap out again, its rose petals rubbed down from all of the mornings of sitting in the shower waiting for something. It’s not new anymore, but she’ll take whatever she can get. She’ll take even a night of iced tea with ice crushed the right way, and fake cherry pie, and maybe his hand on hers across the table. And if he wants more, she’ll give it. If he says, “God means for us to do this,” she’ll believe him.

After lunch, we stopped at one of the kiosks where they sell tee shirts. Aunt Amy picked up one that said
GOD MADE SOME MEN EXTRA CUTE
. She found that hilarious. She laughed at it so hard that tears started running down her cheeks. I didn’t get the joke. But she said she couldn’t resist, she just had to buy it for him. I could see as she folded the shirt carefully into the bag, she’s hooked on the promise again. I just don’t want him to be gone in the morning and never call back.

After the kiosk, I took Aunt Amy into one of the cool stores, Wet Seal, where I secretly wanted to look around for something right. Something that would make up for the dress I had to get to make her happy, something that would feel like me—whoever I am right now. I hadn’t bought any clothes in a long time. I’d been wearing May’s for a while, but since Sky and I broke up I haven’t wanted to. So mostly I just wear my old things and try to blend in.

At first all the clothes in the store seemed dressed up in the wrong way, like they were pretending. But then when I was looking in the back on the sale rack, “Rehab” came on the store radio. A lot of your songs, even the saddest or the maddest ones, sound happy, like you are telling a hard truth but backing it up with a dance tune. It’s part of what I love about you, how you can be defiant, or heartbroken, or broken open, and still be bright about it.

And then I found this shirt. It’s lavender crushed velvet. I felt like you were with me as I rubbed the fabric against my cheek and remembered how I love the way the new clothes in the mall smell sweet and pressed. Like very clean sugar. I tried it on and I felt prettier than I’ve felt since I had on May’s dress at homecoming.

Tomorrow for Easter, I’ll wear my scratchy white dress and we’ll go to Aunt Amy’s church, where they sing things like “Our God Is an Awesome God.” And then on Monday, I’ll wear my new shirt to school.

Amy, you were all over the covers of tabloids and stuff, doing what you did. And how the world is now, how we follow everyone and try to see everything, it changes the story. It makes your life into someone else’s version of you. And that’s not fair. Because your life didn’t belong to us. What you gave us was your music. And I am grateful for it.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear Amy Winehouse,

Something terrible happened today. I wore my new lavender crushed velvet shirt to school, and in English, I saw that Mrs. Buster had on the exact same shirt. Mrs. Buster is not a young, pretty, hip teacher. She’s old and she has bug eyes and ironed-out hair. It seemed impossible. I’d gotten the shirt at a cool store. A store for teenagers. Why would Mrs. Buster shop there? But her shirt was exactly the same, right down to the smooth gray shell buttons that I’d loved. That I’d been running my fingers over all morning. I know everyone noticed. My face was red all through class.

After the bell rang, Mrs. Buster tried to talk to me. “Laurel!” she called as I was walking out.

I turned around, barely.

“Nice shirt.” She smiled.

She knew that our same shirts were not a good thing for me, so there was no reason to smile about it. I did not smile back.

“Laurel, how are you doing?” She said it the way she does, like a question that might as well be a loaded gun.

“Fine,” I said. Though I wanted to tell her I wasn’t doing well at all, if she must know. I also wanted to ask her what the hell she was doing ruining my life shopping at Wet Seal.

Instead, I mumbled, “I’m late,” and ran out the door.