Postcards from a Dead Girl (8 page)

Screaming in the middle of the night can draw attention. I don't know how long I've been doing it, but now that I'm awake, I feel hoarse, like I might have been yelling for the past ten minutes. I roll gingerly off the bed and tiptoe to the balcony. I peek over the edge. Nobody's looking up at me. I listen to the soundtrack of the room. It's quiet. No fists pounding my door. No cautionary phone calls. But then again, I'm in a foreign land. Maybe it's customary to let out an occasional nightmare-induced shriek, or, more realistically, to avoid the source of such a sound. Maybe I wasn't screaming at all. I could have been whimpering like a little girl, for all I know.

I venture a full look over the balcony, gaze down at the streets of Barcelona. An eerie, predawn quiet blankets the city. Only a scattering of cars peruse the normally chaotic roads. A few people stumble home from bars. A lone dog roams the sidewalk, sniffs, and pees randomly, as if marking the entire city as his own. I feel a strange urge to go downstairs and follow him. I wonder where he's been, and where he's going, or if he's just wandering aimlessly.

Suddenly I can't wait to get home. I realize I want to stop wandering myself. Knowing that the Barcelona postcard could have come from the gift shop feels like enough. I don't think I can face another European postmaster, or another day in the blinding sun.

The next day's travel home is a long, exhausted blur of checkouts and check-ins, tickets and airports, fruit juice and tiny foil snack packages. There is pressurized cabin air, a safety presentation, and hourly updates on the weather. In-flight magazines try to sell me on more vacations, and offer incredible inventions to put me at ease: cylindrical neck rests, earphone noise-reducers, easy-wrap garden hose storage units, suction-cup shower mirrors, ice-cube trays that make duck-shaped ice. It's all an effective distraction from the traveling that's actually happening.

By the time I drag my suitcase across the long-term parking lot and sit in my car, I am weary and ready to be done. I feel discombobulated, as if I've never even been in a car before, and now I'm sitting at the wheel, the inexperienced pilot of an amazing technological invention that will careen me down the highway at high speed.

I feel drunk.

Surprisingly, I quickly adapt to driving. The familiarity of the highways and exit signs puts me in a better state. Traffic seems to be flowing well, until I see a car pulled over on the right side of the highway with its hazards on. Everyone ahead of me taps their brakes to slow down and gawk instead of simply moving over to the left, as if they've never seen a car pulled over before.

“Don't stop on the highway,” I say to the traffic, “just keep rolling.”

Eventually the congestion clears, and I find my way onto more comfortable back roads away from all the noise. I think about my recent journeys and consider what I've found. London, Paris, and
Barcelona. Different people, language barriers, and blazing sun. Lots of strangers and unanswered questions. What kind of trip is that? What could Zoe have done there that would be so worth sending postcards about?

I open the window for some fresh air. The stars are out tonight, trying their best to shine through the haze of the spring humidity. Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper hang upside down in the sky. On the roadside ahead I spot a black-and-white animal. From my perspective, it looks like a miniature cow, but as I get closer, I see it's a cat with Holstein markings. The cow-cat sits on the edge of the road, ready to cross once I've passed. And I wonder, how can animals survive so close to speeding cars? I think of Zoe and her fierce compassion for animals, especially the feral and abandoned ones. She would probably make me pull over and feed it or take it to a shelter. But I keep on driving.

The night feels suddenly cold, and the stripes flow past my car in the same steady rhythm, like time slipping away. Dash dash dash. One by one.

I've read that in Haiti, magic is a part of everyday life. Things happen because they do, and people know better than to try to explain it. Objects float against physical law and people know things they shouldn't. Zombies roam the earth. Many have witnessed the zombies, and reported them to be oddly familiar. They are not the glassy-eyed, open-mouthed, moaning creatures of horror movies, but everyday people caught in a half-animated state—quiet, desperate beings who swirl around in an eddy in the river of life. A curse, some say. A zombie curse. I've read several magazine articles on it, and I'm a believer.

It's a harder sell to my sister.

“You are not a zombie,” Natalie says emphatically. Her effort to whisper in her office phone sounds like foamy-mouthed madness. “You just got back from a nice cabin weekend away with friends. Aren't you supposed to be relaxed and refreshed?”

“There is a condition,” I explain, “according to the Bizango secret societies, that is similar to a precancerous body state, only it's more of a primer for zombieness, or zombiehood, whatever you might call it.”

Nat scoffs. “I wish I could go on a cabin weekend away with friends.”

“Are you saying there isn't such a state?”

“No, there is certainly not,” she hisses.

“A precancerous condition? Are you sure?”

“Yes, one can be in a precancerous condition, Sid, but you don't have cancer. We ran all those tests already, and your white blood cells are perfect. You don't even have signs of an infection. I'm sorry to say, but you are dangerously healthy.”

I consider this, but MRIs and CATs and EKGs aren't designed to pick up pre-zombiehood conditions. Maybe there is such a machine somewhere in the dark heart of Haiti, but I'll need to do some more research.

“What about my genetic disposition for aneurysms?” I ask.

“What about it?”

“I could fall over tomorrow. Bam. Just like Mom.”

“And I could get struck by a bus.”

“But you're not walking around with a genetic disposition to walk in front of buses, Natalie. You don't walk in front of buses more than most people, putting yourself at greater risk than most people.” I feel my voice rising against her whisper-scream defense. “I don't know that you even come in contact with buses, actually.”

“I don't have time for this today.”

“When is the last time a bus rolled through your waiting room? I mean, really, of course you're not going to get struck by one because the closest bus line is seven blocks from your office!” I loosen my grip on the phone, pull the hot receiver off my ear. I cool down while she mumbles something to her secretary.

“So what's your point,” she says.

“Lousy metaphor.”

“Point taken. No more bus metaphors.”

“Don't get funny with me, doctor.” She hates it when I call her doctor. “You know I'm right.”

“You and I came from the same gene pool,
Sid
.” I hate it when she says my name like that. “But there are no other family members with a history of aneurysm, and even if there were, the chance that you would develop the same thing Mom had is extremely low, due to your age alone. Just because Mom had an aneurysm doesn't mean you're going to have one. You may give me one, of course.”

I pace in the living room, switch the phone to my cold ear. Nat's voice changes tone with the temperature. She sounds foreign, French maybe. I switch it back to the hot ear. I can't get over the feeling that there's something she's not telling me.

“We should feel lucky she went so fast,” she says, “without any suffering.”

“You're right.”

“Mom was a rare case.”

A rare case? That doesn't sound good. I've heard that all great medical students go through a period of time when they believe they have all or most of the symptoms of the diseases they study. Natalie never believed she had any disease. Maybe I'd make a great physician.

“Mom had a fusiform cerebral aneurysm…” she explains.

“Well, that makes it all clear.”

“…and that type of aneurysm rarely ruptures.”

“If you say so,” I say.

“What happened to Mom was a freak accident.”

“Okay.”

“Are we good for now?” she asks.

“Yes, I'll let you go then.”

“Great. Thanks,” she says, and hangs up.

Rare case, I think. Dangerously healthy. I rub my hot ear. The
blood surges through my veins, over and around my eardrums. I listen closely for rare objects passing through my bloodstream: little freak accidents waiting to happen.

My watch seems to be ticking exceptionally loud, but it's only an acoustical trick. The kitchen clock, bedroom clock, and my watch will on occasion tick at the exact same time, causing a resounding knocking that echoes through the walls and my head. It's my telltale heart. And my heart says I'm late for some much-needed therapy.

 

The jets spray the bottom of my car with an impressive force. I drive slowly to allow the under-body a good rinse. I continue into the wheel guide; the tire drops in. The lights change from green to yellow to red, and the car tugs forward. A giant black robot arm comes alive, slides away from the wall and across the width of the car. The heart of the car wash pumps water and foam through the arteries along the robot arm until it can no longer take the pressure. Twenty-four valves simultaneously open and streams of soap shoot down across the hood. The first pass covers the left side with pink foam, and I'm already beginning to relax. I close my eyes and listen to the whirr-snap of the arm as it covers the rear window and makes its final turn to complete the first coat. Globs of foam slop over the windshield. Twenty seconds of pure bliss. I am relaxed and right with the world. Another coating will follow shortly, I know—the tri-color foam that acts as a cleaner and a shiner—but nothing can beat that first pink coat. I am totally entombed inside the car now, protected under a layer of candy froth, sheltered inside the cinder block building that rests beneath a swath of majestic maple trees.

This image is stuck in my mind: a glorious bloom of brain cancer squeezing my skull.

I sit in my dining room and try to focus on something tangible. Zero resting across the room. The smell of fresh-brewed coffee under my nose. It's not working. Usually the car wash trips help, but today this nagging picture overrides the peace of the pink foam.

Like kudzu tendrils slowly crushing an old Southern mansion, the disease's grip is slow and steady. And that wonderful and sickening lilac perfume lets me know it's there, doing its magic. Nothing personal, just hungry, need more room, don't I smell pretty?

I feel hot liquid scald my leg before I register the shattering sound. I've dropped my cup of coffee. I look down at the cracked mess—a broken relic at my feet, freshly left by someone other than myself, it seems. A clue to something, or a warning. People don't go just dropping things, the warning says. You're slipping, buddy. You are slip slidin' away.

“Believe we're gliding down the highway,” I sing to myself.

Zero barks.

“You know the nearer your destination—”

He barks again.

“What!” I yell back.

Zero stops. He's not a barker, really. He's waiting for something. I lean down from my chair to pick up the pieces of the shattered coffee mug. He comes over and licks my face.

“All right, you've got my attention. So?”

Zero laps up the coffee on the floor.

“Hey, watch out, you might cut yourself. Coffee's not good for you anyway. No more coffee. I should take you to the vet one of these days.”

He sits back and groans.

We sit in silence for a while. He lets out a shuddering sigh, like he knows I'm going to leave again but he's not sure for how long.

“Hey listen,” I tell him, “I've got good news.”

His ears perk up.

“I think I'm done with traveling for a while. I'm going to stick around.”

I reach down and pat him on the head. He seems pleased.

“I just wonder if I've been looking in the wrong place all along,” I say, and get up out of my chair.

The basement feels exceptionally musty tonight. Maybe it's just my mood. I feel like I need a Ouija board or candles and incense to get this going. I've never conjured Mom up before; she's always come to me. Although one might argue I've been conjuring her up this whole time.

I retrieve the dusty bottle of Bordeaux from underneath the stairs and set it up on the workbench. I clip a work lamp on a rafter and direct the light down at the bottle, interrogation-style. I look through the window well to see if any neighbors are watching, but only rocks and worms stare back at me. I pull up a chair and sit down.

“Mom,” I say to the bottle. No response. I clap twice, like the Clapper. “Mom,” I say louder. “It's Sid. We need to talk.”

Again, no response, which is fine, I wasn't expecting the bottle would dance across the table. It doesn't really matter what level of poltergeist activity occurs. I need to say some things, so I start saying them. Maybe she's listening.

“My dog, Zero, is probably my best friend,” I tell her. “He's a big help.” I tell her how Natalie is pregnant now, and that she's turning into an angry, impatient version of her former self; I tell
her about the red eye in the giant humming CAT-scan machine and the car washes.

I pause. Deep breath. I ask her if Zoe is on the other side and why she might be playing such a cruel game with the postcards. No answer.

“And why a bottle of French wine?” I ask, and stand up. “Why not a Californian or Australian?” I point at the bottle accusingly. “What happened to good old-fashioned mysterious phone calls? You know, static on the line? Spooky whispering?”

I must be getting pretty worked up because my heart starts to race and the scent of lilacs begins to float through the basement—a cloud of weighty perfume. I feel a chill in the air as the flowers fill my head. Mom pushes through then, a hushed voice, like I've awakened her from a nap.

“What are you saying?” she asks, her voice swirly and distant. “What are you saying to me?”

The work lamp suddenly glows brighter, infused with the new energy in the room. I squint under the hot light. My breathing labors, and I feel my balance washing out, my legs tingling, horizons tilting.

Her voice is loud, immediate, demanding: “What are you trying to say?!”

The room goes dark.