Goldengrove (4 page)

My mother said, “I think I can distinguish one kind of pain from another.”

Dad said, “Actually, there was a piece on the news about that medication Dawson prescribed.”

“It’s dangerous, I hope,” said Mom.

“How much are you taking?” Dad took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Not enough,” said Mom. “He never gives me enough to help.”

Dad said, “Be careful, Daisy. They’ve taken a lot of that crap off the market. The good news is, you lose the joint pain. The bad news is, you lose your life. The stroke, the blood clots, the—”

My mom said, “The pain in my hands
is
my life.”

“What medicine?” I said. “Stroke? Blood clots? Mom shouldn’t—”

“Don’t worry, she won’t,” Dad said.

Mom said, “Maybe he can switch me to something safer. Anyhow, I’ll call him. He can recommend someone for Nico.”

Dad said, “The chances of something happening to Nico are statistically less than lightning striking twice in the same place.”

“Lightning
does
strike twice,” I said. “It hits the highest point. If there’s one tree in a field—”

“You’re fine,” said Dad.

“I’m
not
fine,” I said.

“That’s not what I meant,” Dad said.

“It was treatable,” said Mom. “Henry, my God, it could have been treated.”

That was something I hadn’t known, and wished I hadn’t found out.

“If we’d only paid attention,” Mom said. “If we’d only been more aggressive . . .”

Aggressive
was the last word I would have used about my parents. They could have prevented this. Margaret would be alive.

I said, “Why don’t you make an appointment for me to see a real doctor in the city?” I was sorry as soon as I said it. I didn’t want to know.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” said Dad.

“Okay,” said Mom. “I’ll get a name. We’ll make an appointment.”

We went back to not eating. Dad had made edamame. I unzipped a pod, and teased the membrane off one bean, then another. I was getting thinner, but it wasn’t what I’d wanted when I used to stand in front of the mirror, inhaling till my ribs ached.

My mother said, “Speaking of health concerns . . . Nico, aren’t you losing a little weight? The last thing we need around here is some life-threatening eating disorder.”

My father put his hand on her arm.

“Daisy,” he said. “Relax.”

“Relax?” she said. “You’re kidding.”

“No one’s eating,” he said. “We don’t have to torture Nico about food. We didn’t when—”

“When what?” I said.

“Radishes?” my father said. “Remember the radish diet?”

So they’d known about that, too. How could I have thought it was a secret when for days I ate nothing but radishes and ramen noodles for dinner? My parents never even glanced at what I put on my plate. Maybe it was part of their theory that anything they forbade would become our heart’s desire. And maybe they were right, because the diets never lasted. Mom and Dad often mentioned how twisted our society was for making young women want to be thin. They’d pretended that they were just talking and not giving us warning advice.

“It’s not like that now,” I said. “I’m never hungry.”

“Make sure you drink plenty of water,” said Mom.

“I do,” I lied. Then we sat there.

What had we talked about before? Margaret had done all the talking. Now there was nothing to say. We were the wallflowers left behind when Margaret waltzed away.

Finally, I said, “You know what Violet told me? At graduation, the picture they used was Margaret’s yearbook photo. You know the one.” I bugged my eyes. “Margaret despised it. She told me that the photographer had gotten the kids to focus by saying, ‘Look at my hand!’ and every portrait caught the person at the moment of noticing that the guy was missing two fingers.”

My parents pretended that Margaret hadn’t told us the story. Because that was what we did then. We talked about Margaret as if all the old family stories were news. It made us feel as if our connection with her was ongoing, as if our knowledge of her was susceptible to revision. Every so often, I almost slipped and said something that might have led to the subject of Aaron. Then Margaret’s face floated before me, silencing me with a fierce look that I was already forgetting.

Dad said, “Daisy, remember the time we took her to church and she pretended to be sick so we’d have to leave, and all the way home she did that perfect little-kid imitation of the minister preaching ‘God is not a BMW’?”

Mom said, “What made you think of that?” It was a trick question. Poor Dad. The minister was the same one who’d spoken at Margaret’s service.

My mother speared a green bean and stared at it as if she’d never seen a bean or a fork. I focused on the impaled bean. I hated seeing them cry.

She said, “I can’t stop thinking about the last argument she and I had. It started about smoking and escalated. We both said things we didn’t mean, and I never got to take it back. Isn’t that the worst horror? That your child could die like that before you got to make up?”

My father walked behind her chair and held her by the shoulders. He said, “You loved each other. How could you have a teenage daughter and not have a little fight now and then? She’d been on permanent eye-roll with you for the last five years.”

“It wasn’t a fight,” Mom said. “And it certainly wasn’t a
little
fight.”

“I’m sorry,” said Dad. “I—”

I said, “She was smoking that day in the boat. I told her she shouldn’t. She got mad, that’s when she dove in. I should have let her have the cigarette—”

I caught myself in mid-sentence. I never told on my sister. But you couldn’t tell on the dead, you couldn’t get them in trouble.

“You told her not to smoke,” said Mom. “You wanted her to live.”

One thing I would never tell them was that Margaret’s last words were, “Smoke this.” That was her special present for me, the hair shirt she’d left me to wear until time and age and forgetfulness laundered it into something softer.

Somehow, I managed to get to my feet and walk around the table. The three of us clumped together. My father squeezed us so hard that Mom’s shoulders rattled against my chest. My tears kept dripping into her hair, which presented a logical puzzle until I realized that somehow, at some point, I’d grown as tall as my mother.

Three

E
VERY NIGHT
, I D
REAMED ABOUT
M
ARGARET
. S
HE WAS ALWAYS
alive and well. I had one of those recurring dreams that trick you into thinking you’re awake, then plunge you into another dream, more brutal than the first because the fake awakening makes the second dream seem more real. I dreamed I heard my sister’s voice and followed it to the kitchen, where she was sitting with Aaron at our red enamel table. She was eating Cheerios from the box and blowing smoke rings. I thought, Mom and Dad will kill her!

She and Aaron were talking and laughing. But when I walked in, they fell silent. Aaron gave me a funny look. Why had I told him that Margaret was dead when she so obviously wasn’t? I shrugged. I must have gotten it wrong. She hadn’t dived into the water, or maybe they’d found her and saved her. Margaret smiled and touched her lips, entrusting me with another secret.

That was when I awoke, seasick, drenched, and shipwrecked, as if the knotted sheets were a sail on which I’d washed ashore. I longed to slip back into the dream in which I might catch up with Margaret.

I counted the hours till morning, then the minutes and seconds, until I got dizzy and lay there thinking of how Margaret and I used to play those little-kid games of pain and endurance, twisting one another’s arm until the loser cried out. Now I was playing against myself, but even so, I gave in. I got out of bed and wandered through the house, tripping over the books and shoes no one bothered to pick up, as if there was no particular spot where anything belonged.

Our house had always been neat before, but now our possessions had taken advantage of our moment of weakness. In the dark, the house grew more corridors and corners, and blackness scrambled the map of how one room led to the next. Margaret had told me that the woman who owned the house before Mom’s parents saw a ghost that warned her she would die if she stopped building on additions, which eventually she did.

I used to be scared of the house at night, not of killers or ghosts, but of my own power to imagine something watching me from the shadows. Those fears were gone completely. What could the shadows be hiding? Now I wished I could meet a ghost with a message from my sister. I loved the mysterious creaks and groans. I hurried toward them on the chance that the mouse in the wall might be Margaret’s spirit. Margaret had always loved ghost stories, and now our lives had become one. But it was a ghost story in reverse, a ghost story in which the living were praying to be haunted.

It didn’t matter how much noise I made. I knew that no one was sleeping. Insomnia was our language. We’d worked out a kind of system—an etiquette, you might say. When one of my parents roamed the house, the others would stay in bed and let my mother sit at the silent piano or leave my father to open and shut the refrigerator door. But if I was awake, alone, one of them would get up and find me in the dark.

The only semi-comforting part was that we didn’t have to talk. They’d been dreaming about her, too. The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then never again, was so impossible to fathom that of course we kept trying to figure it out, even when we were unconscious.

Eventually we’d go back to our rooms and lie in the dark and pretend, for the others’ sake, to sleep. Which, I vaguely remembered, was how you
fell
asleep. First you pretended, then you were. The tricky part was that thinking about pretending to sleep meant you were still awake.

One night, I heard Margaret knock on the wall between our rooms. I got up, as I always had, to see what my sister wanted. I was halfway out the door before I realized that a whole new dream had found a way to torment me.

I waited for dawn, but only because I had forgotten how hard mornings were. For a second, I’d feel normal. Then came the dim awareness of something off, out of place. Then the truth came crashing in, and that was it for the rest of the day. Sunlight was a reproof. Shouldn’t I feel better than I had in the dead of night?

I couldn’t remember simple words, the purpose of household objects. I used to like helping my father cook, but now I’d stare into a drawer and wonder which one was the garlic press and which one was the corkscrew. I’d go to the living room, only to find myself pointing the mobile phone at the TV and pressing and pressing and pressing.

Violet and Samantha phoned to ask if I wanted to go somewhere. It took me forever to recognize their voices. I’d forgotten why I’d liked them and what we used to do. They’d mention movies, a party. Violet’s parents were going away. Samantha’s mom had offered to drive us to the mall. I’d think, Their mothers told them to call. Samantha had a sister, so I hated her more.

When I said I didn’t want to go out, they sounded a little annoyed, as if I was acting princessy and spoiled. Why didn’t I appreciate the good deed they were doing? They seemed relieved when I said no and they could hang up before I changed my mind or started crying. Naturally, they sounded strange. They weren’t talking to the same person. I was no longer Nico. I was the dead girl’s sister.

After a while they stopped calling, which was fine with me. What would we have talked about? Boys? School? MTV? Period cramps? My friends were silly and boring. I wanted to be with Margaret.

There was nothing I wanted to do in place of the things I
couldn’t
do now, the everyday things I’d hardly noticed before. I had a mental list, like the one near the lifeguard’s chair at the lake, when they
had
a lifeguard, before the town got too cheap. A bottle, a diver, an unleashed dog with red diagonal slashes.

1. No cookies. They smelled like my sister. I even avoided the baked goods aisle in the supermarket.

2. No lake. I kept my curtains drawn so the sight of it wouldn’t sneak up on me. Every so often, I made myself look, searching for the spot where Margaret dove in. It was like staring at the sun, dangerous and searing.

3. No Margaret’s room. Once in a while, I heard my mother rattling around, opening and shutting drawers. I fought the urge to tell her to leave, Margaret wouldn’t like it. I worried that Mom might start getting rid of Margaret’s stuff, but I should have known better. Sometimes she ran out of Margaret’s room, leaving the door open, until Dad came along and closed it. Until he did, walking down the hall was like passing an accident scene. I turned my head, I tried not to look, but I couldn’t help it.

Margaret’s room had been a work of art, an installation in progress. She was always tacking up pictures of jazz singers and movie stars, vintage snapshots and hand-tinted postcards, and taking them down when she lost interest. She made altars with photos and candles to her rotating personal gods. One day it was Carole Lombard, the next day Gandhi or Marlene Dietrich, Malcolm X, Bono, or Saint Francis. Every time Margaret went to town, she’d find a treasure—a mismatched pair of mannequin limbs, a case of Mardi Gras beads, antique hatboxes stickered with labels, a crucifix made of popsicle sticks—though we lived in a town in which, I’d thought, no one threw out any interesting garbage.

I couldn’t stand it that Margaret’s room would never change again, not unless my parents gutted it. What would it become? A guest room? We never had guests, and we certainly wouldn’t now. I’d read about cultures and countries where people made shrines to their dead. But an altar to Margaret would have been redundant. All we had to do was not dismantle the one she’d made to herself.

I tried not to look, but I’d find myself staring at Margaret’s bed. How could it be there without her? I could picture her so clearly, her long limbs sprawled on the fraying thrift-shop quilt made from satin neckties. I used to sit against the pillows, my head turned away from the slightly smelly stuffed animals she’d had since she was little. I’d listen to her practice a song, or I’d help her choose an outfit before she went out with Aaron.

She’d say, “Nico, be honest. Does the green jacket look better than the blue?” Green or blue, who cared what I said? Margaret always looked perfect.

Sometimes we’d lie with my head on her stomach, listening to music. I felt the music run through me as she hummed the melody line or sang the low harmonies to gospel songs, or the country heartbreak ballads she made fun of and adored. She’d point out slight variations between two recordings of
The St. Matthew Passion
, the clumsy stress on a single word that ruined the entire chorus. A James Brown yelp or the way Nina Simone rolled a note around in her mouth before she spit it out.

There was almost nothing Margaret wouldn’t listen to, nothing she couldn’t learn from. I remembered her playing hip-hop so loud that both our rooms bumped to the beat. She knocked on the wall, and when I went to see what she wanted, she was punching the air along with the bass line. She said, “Don’t you love how the guy uses his voice as a rhythm instrument?” The only song she hated was the theme from
Titanic
, which brought up the next item:

4. No music. If I’d heard “My Funny Valentine,” someone would have had to shoot me. It wasn’t only good music that hurt, songs Margaret might have sung. Bad music was worse, in a way. Once, I went with Mom to the health food store, and the theme from
Titanic
was playing. I glared at the other shoppers as if they were witnesses to a crime. They were stuffing their carts with cereal to keep their families healthy. Without Margaret, there was no one to protect me from the cardboard granola and the syrupy Hollywood sound track. Which reminded me:

5. No old films. No movies of any kind.

One night, my parents decided to go to the movie theater in Albany, the only place for miles around that showed anything foreign or indie. Margaret and I used to joke that Mom and Dad wouldn’t see a film unless it was Taiwanese or Iranian and put you to sleep before the opening credits.

“Come with us,” Mom begged me. “It’ll be . . . fun. It’s . . . suspenseful.”

“What country is this one from?”

My parents exchanged guilty looks.

“Korea,” my mother admitted. “God, Nico, it doesn’t exactly make you seem smart to roll your eyes when someone says Korea.”

I said, “I don’t have to
seem
smart.”

“Girls,” said my father. “Please. Daisy, leave her alone. Come on, Nico, honey. Come with us.”

“Not a chance,” I said.

My father said, “How about this? If you don’t like it, we’ll pay you the cost of the ticket. It’s a win-win situation.”

I said, “You don’t have to bribe me just because you’re afraid to leave me home alone.”

“That’s not true,” said my father.

But we all knew it was. They were terrified by those three little words: only Remaining Child. The phrase had started lurking in the back of their minds and popping out like a jack-in-the-box the minute we left one another’s sight.

I liked the idea of time on my own. What scared me was the thought of sitting through a boring movie. Boredom was dangerous now that every empty second was an invitation to gaze into the abyss and think how sweet it would feel to jump. Dangerous, because in those days, there was
only
boredom and grief, like two visitors, dressed in black, refusing to go home, no matter how we yawned and squirmed and kept looking at our watches.

“Mom, Dad, you can go to movies,” I said. “Nothing bad will happen to me.”

My mother knocked on wood.

“Have fun,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

I felt as if they were kidnappers who’d been holding me hostage, and now I could chew through the duct tape. But where would I escape to? Solitude and silence. The minute they left, I turned on the TV, as loud as it would go. Even though it was something I sometimes did with Margaret, I poured myself a shot of Dad’s high-end tequila. I sipped it and settled into the couch.

Within seconds I realized I’d made the wrong decision. I ran to the window, but my parents were already gone. The remote was a demon magnet dragging me toward the old movie channel. I clung to the harmless sitcoms. I tried one, then another. I didn’t understand what anyone was saying. Actors sat around waiting for someone to burst through the door and detonate the laugh track. I switched to the news: a Baghdad street, the two charred truck skeletons offhandedly tossed into a ring of campfires. Flash, flash, the portraits of boys Aaron’s age, wearing uniforms and brave smiles to convince us that they didn’t mind being dead. Their faces had always saddened me, but now I imagined being their sister.

I hit the mute button and watched a senator work his mouth like a sucker fish as his face turned redder and redder. On the Discovery Channel, a scientist was talking about building an outer-space umbrella to shield our planet from UV death rays. Once, I would have been interested, but now I turned off the TV and picked up a paperback mystery Mom had been pretending to read. The few drops of tequila had misted my brain like frying-pan spray. Every sentence slid out even as I read it.

How long had Mom and Dad been away? Why
couldn’t
lightning strike twice?

I shut my eyes. I awoke to the sound of my parents’ car—I
hoped
it was their car—pulling into the driveway. I jumped up and rinsed out the tequila glass and swished water around in my mouth. I found the cartoon channel, turned down the TV, and tried to do a convincing imitation of myself chilling at home.

I needn’t have bothered. My parents looked like patients who had just heard that some promising new treatment had failed in clinical trials. They’d brought their own weather inside, the way that people carry winter into a warm room. I could tell they’d been arguing all the way home from the theater.

“How was the movie?” I said.

Mom said, “My God, Henry, how the hell was I supposed to know it was a horror film about drowning? Your dad seems to think I would purposely take him to a film about girls disappearing under the water—”

“It’s called
The Lake
,” Dad said. “What did you expect? And there’s no need to involve Nico in this.”