Kathryn Magendie (16 page)

“It looks great.” He sat and stared at his food.

I took a sip of my coffee with three spoons of sugar and some cream, sat up straight in my chair and attacked my breakfast, pretending my feelings weren’t hurt that he wasn’t eating his.

When I was almost done, he’d taken only a few bites, drank the first cup of coffee and was pouring another one when the phone rang. He leapt up to answer it before it barely finished with its first ring. With his back to me, he listened, then mumbled into the phone, listened again, and I heard him moan-cry, “How will I tell her?” He hung up the phone and turned to me, tears spilling over his eyes, his chin trembling as if he was five years old.

I stood up. “What’s wrong?”

He went into the living room, sat on the couch, and put his head in his hands.

“What is it? Is Mother okay?” I thought of my horrid secret wishes. I wanted to run fast as I could, dig up the box, shake out that secret wish, and let it blow out to the winds. “Father?”

He mumbled into his hands. “It . . . it’s your Grandmother Rosetta. My ma.”

“Nonna?”

He looked at me through his fingers, not bothering to take away his hands and face me full on. “That’s where your mother went. I couldn’t go. I couldn’t go. She went to help her. I couldn’t go.” He scrubbed at his face and dropped his hands to his lap. “I couldn’t watch it. I’m a coward.”

“What? What are you saying?”

“I didn’t want to upset you. We thought there was more time.” He stared right through me, whispered, “It was a woman’s cancer.”

“Nonna has cancer? We have to go to her now.” I grabbed his hands with mine and pulled. “Get
up
. We have to go
now
. She needs me. Get up! Hurry!” I pulled harder, but he didn’t budge.

He squeezed my hands. “
Listen
. Listen to me, Melissa.”

I became still. That still where I knew he was going to tell me something bad. I wanted to put my hands over my ears so I’d never have to hear it. All my insides turned to squishy Jell-O, but my outsides turned to stone.

“She died this morning. She’s gone.” He released my hands.

I stepped back.

“Our bodies are infallible. Biological machines that break down . . . ”

“Stop it!”

“Biological death follows clinical death . . . ”

“Stop!”

“Brain cells die from lack of oxygen,
hypoxia
, death of tissue and . . . ”

“
No
!”

“Clinical death occurs when biological machine stops breathing and tissues begin their immediate journey to decay, and—”

“
Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up
!” I slammed my fist into the side of his head. I felt it all the way through my body—the hardness of his skull, the softness of his face, the electricity of how angry I was pass between us.

He put his face back in his hands, and sobbed with his shoulders shaking.

My tongue shaped into a point and flicked out at Father. “You lied! You both
lied
. I should have been the one to help her! You should have sent
me
. I hate you! I hate both of you! All you do is talk about your stupid scientific stuff and your stupid books and your stupid everything is
stupid stupid stupid
!” I stomped my foot until the whole house trembled. “And Nonna’s not a biological machine! She’s my grandmother and I love her—you
liar liar liar
!” I stomped my foot again. The house shook around the rafters, the floor trembled underneath me. I turned, ran to my room, locked the door, and flung myself on my bed. All the squishy water inside me squirted out of my eyes and nose and soaked the bed covers.

Later, when Father knocked and called out to me, I ignored him. He said, “I’ve made flight arrangements. We leave at
eleven o’clock
tomorrow morning.” I listened to his breathing, then to his footsteps as he walked away.

Grandmother Rosetta, my nonna, was gone, and they hadn’t let me say goodbye. She’d been sick, and no one had told me. Father sent my mother, instead of me. I should have been there. I could have made her better. I hated both my parents. I hated everyone. I hated the whole biological world.

FIFTEEN

Early in the morning, I threw on Peter’s clothes and ran to Whale Back to leave a moccasin mail note. The air was chilly, and from above, the mist settled thick and heavy over the valley, as if trying to protect everyone and everything, or to hide things. I didn’t understand how everything looked so normal when everything was so wrong.

Inside a sandwich baggie, tucked in Peter’s jacket, was the letter to Sweetie I’d hide in the brambles under the rock. In the letter, I told her how I hated my parents, and how nothing would ever feel the same again. How it wasn’t fair that her father and grandfather were gone, and my grandparents were gone, even though we loved them. And that she was right, if God did exist, he was mean and cruel. I spewed out all my hurt so hard in places on the page that the paper tore.

At Whale Back, when I placed the letter under the rock, the world fell silent. It was as if all the creatures knew how sad and angry I was and looked at me in pity. The animals began chattering and twittering again as soon as I sat with my back against Whale Back. I turned my thoughts to what Father talked about on the phone last night as I sneaked near to listen.

Father said that against tradition, and to a lot of arguing from some of the family over her immortal soul, Grandmother Rosetta wanted to be cremated, and her ashes thrown into the Pacific Ocean, except for a bit that must be buried in her garden. She wanted those garden ashes poured right into a hole in the ground and then covered up. Father, and his brothers and sisters, agreed to do everything Grandmother Rosetta had asked, even if the rest of the family was against it. I heard him say, “All this religious tradition hullabaloo isn’t helping matters. Religion has been the cause of more wars, more—yes, yes, okay, I know.”

I couldn’t imagine my nonna as a dead body, like I’d seen in Father’s books where they did scientific stuff to them, the people who donated their bodies. It was too horrible to think about.

When twenty minutes slugged by, I knew it was time to get ready for the worst days of my life. I went home, bathed and changed, and with my suitcase in my hand, I waited on the steps for the taxi to take Father and me to the airport. The cat lady worked in her garden, and she turned to me to wave. I pretended I didn’t see her. She soon went back to her work, four cats winding around her legs.

During our flight, Father tried to talk to me about what we were passing over, but I stared out of the window as the earth first flew away from me and then later rushed back to me. Once we were in
California
, we took a cab to Grandmother Rosetta’s, and I ran to the room where I always stayed when I visited her, the room she let me decorate the way I wanted to. There were paintings hung about, mine and Nonna’s. The walls were a soft purple and trimmed in bright white. Scattered on the floor were lavender throw rugs, on the white painted bed was a lavender bedspread with lots of pillows in different shapes and colors, and white curtains trimmed in lavender that were so light they blew in the wind like angel wings. I lay under the nubby bedspread, and wouldn’t talk to anyone. Mother looked in on me, and I was surprised, but glad, when she said not one word, and only smoothed back my hair and then left me alone.

Later that night, Peter came to my room. “Hey, sis,” he said as he pressed my shoulder, “I’m sorry.” He sat in the rocker and read Grandmother Rosetta’s
Reader’s Digest Condensed Books
. I didn’t speak, and he didn’t care, but I felt better having him there and soon drifted away towards sleep. When I woke later, he still sat reading by a tiny light. I wanted to thank him, to jump up and hug him, but I fell asleep again under the eye of my big brother. When I woke again, he was gone, but the book lay on the chair, a reminder he’d stayed and watched over me.

It was time for Nonna’s
memorial. I just couldn’t stand it. Grandmother Rosetta’s family and her friends spilled in and out of the house. I barely noticed any of them. The world around me was as if in a dream. I floated above the ground, feeling more a ghost than my nonna would be. I’d floated out of my room, floated down the stairs, then floated through her front door, floated to the long black car, floated to the beach, floated on the sand.

As Grandmother Rosetta wanted us to, the memorial service was by the ocean, where she loved to paint. Mother, Father, Peter, and I stood together during the services. After, I walked away to be alone.

Father came to me, held out a vial filled with ashes.

I stared at it.

“Take these ashes and toss them out into the ocean.”

I shook my head.

“If you don’t, you’ll always regret it.”

I looked away.

“Princess, this is what she wanted.” He took my hand, placed the vial in my palm, and closed my fingers around it. Walking away from me, I saw that his pant legs were wet and sandy, seaweed stuck to his good shoes.

Peter took Father’s place by me. After a time, he said, “It hurts and it always will, but don’t let it stop you from doing what you need to do to say goodbye.”

“I don’t want to say goodbye.”

“Who does?” He sighed, then said, “It’s what Nonna wants, okay?”

I shrugged, but I knew he was right and he knew I knew. He punched me in the arm. “You look smaller, and almost sort of kind of pretty even, for a sister, I guess,” then he turned and walked away toward Father and Mother. I tried to imagine him in a white coat, looking at x-rays of people’s bones, how he’d heal their hurts one day, make them stronger. That’s why he stayed away from us, so he could study and do well in school and become the orthopedic surgeon he wanted to be. That’s why he stayed away.

I sat upon the sand and watched the waves reach out to me and then go away, reach out and go away, reach out and go away. Nothing ever stayed still. Nothing ever stayed in one place. I thought of Sweetie on her mountain and pushed her away, too.

I took off my sandals, stood, and walked to the edge where the water foamed up on the sand. I threw the vial out to sea, without opening it, and watched it bob and float, bob and float. I liked that some of Nonna’s ashes would float like that, in their own little boat. They would have a journey to who knows where. Maybe someone would find it washed up on the beach, open it, and then pour her out in a strange land, or she’d be swallowed by a whale and taken down to the deep and then up again in a big spray, or a dolphin would nudge it to its friends and they’d play with it. I almost smiled.

Father came to get me and we climbed back into the black car to head back to Grandmother Rosetta’s house, though it was within walking distance. There were more cars parked alongside her street, more people standing inside and out. Inside her bungalow, there was food and noise and some people were laughing. I didn’t want to hear people laughing, and couldn’t understand how anyone could smile, eat, or laugh at all.

I wandered into her garden and called her name, “Nonna? Nonna? Are you here?” Zemry told of people seeing those they loved soon after they’d left the earth. Maybe she was sitting on her lemon tree, or maybe on a star, hidden from me in the daylight, but when night fell, I’d be able to see her there, waving to me, and she’d be glowing from the inside out. I followed her flower- and tree-lined path to her rock and water garden. There were koi, lily, and palms, and it was quiet, except for the bubbling water sounds. Sitting on her bench, I concentrated as hard as I could so she could find me there.

“Where are you?” No answer. I left the garden and went to her studio. When I opened the door and went inside, I was knocked back by everything that was my grandmother. She was everywhere in her painting room. The light filtered in and I stared. Canvases lined the walls of her studio, in order. With my heart flopping around in my chest, I went to each one and studied it, touched it.

She had painted herself from before she was born as a seed of herself in a round shape that looked like a flower bulb, and ending as an old woman with her old hand held over her lower stomach, her eyes staring out at me. In that last one, the largest of them all, I held in my breath. There, in her dark eyes, she had drawn the picture of her burning barn. The fire had all but eaten away the barn, until it was almost all fire. I could hear her breathing that sounded like fire rushing.

There was a note taped to the big painting.

I reached out and took it, my fingers warm and already full of whatever she had to say. It was as if the letter was heavy, and when I opened it, I imagined the words dripping down like paint.

Dear Melissa Rose, I knew you’d come here. Now, I don’t want you to cry. Please, no tears. I knew exactly what I wanted and I had it all. I have no regrets, other than I left before I was able to see you again. I’ll miss making cookies, and the pasta, and painting—all with you. Look for me in all the beautiful places you will find,
o chiacchere
. I will be with you always. I will never leave you, even if you think you do not feel me. I am in this room with you now, smiling down on you. Right now, as I write this, I feel you. I know you feel me looking at you.

Don’t be upset with your parents. I know you will be angry that I didn’t ask you to come. But how could I let you see me like this? I will speak frankly, little one. There is vomit, pain, cries, and the silly tears come willy nilly. There is trembling and weakness. There is the end. You know who I am. I am not that helpless shell of a woman. The hollowed out woman consumed by the flames was only a vessel to hold all that I will always be. The soul of me will whisper on the wind. I love you, my
nipotina
. Grow up strong. Be fearless. Always be fearless. And sweet one, do not be hard on your mother, for she loves you. She has done a brave thing to come to me and we have made our amends.

With love to you,
Nonna
.

I read the letter over and over so I’d remember the words, looked around the room, and said to her, “I feel you Nonna, I do.” I left her studio to bury the letter under her rose bushes. Peter found me there, staring at the mound of dirt, trying not to cry.

He pulled me up, gave me a hug. I thought how brothers and sisters hardly ever hugged, unless something really bad happened. I thought of the times when he was home and he’d called me silly names, ones that would be hurtful if anyone else said them, but since he was my brother I gave it back as good as I got.

“I have to fly out in two hours. My cab will be here shortly.”

“But you just got here.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t do well at these things. With our parents.”

I looked across the garden towards Mother. She stood near the fountain, staring off towards the sea, her usual neat hair blowing wild all over her head like a Medusa. I couldn’t see her expression, but her body looked sad and tired.

“Hey, sis? You going to be all right?”

I looked up at my brother, and nodded, afraid to say anything in the case I burst out crying again like a big fat baby.

He gave me a sad crooked smile, then said, “I feel like I’m deserting you. Don’t be mad at your big old brother, okay?”

I hugged him tight and hard. “I’m not, Ugly Toad Face.”

“Thanks, Booger-Head.” He pinched my nose, then quickly turned and strode off, tall, dark haired, and square-shouldered like our father, except more handsome. He turned once and waved. His look said he was glad to be escaping.

I ran to Nonna’s studio, looked inside to make sure no one was there, and then took the key from under the rock and locked the door. I didn’t want anyone in there. I put the key in my shoe and walked to the house.

Back in the living room, a skinny old man put on Grandmother Rosetta’s big band music. Mother frowned at him, but he stood in front of the stereo with his arms crossed over his chest. I knew some of the family, including Mother, wanted to be in a funeral home, with the flowers so strong they didn’t smell like flowers anymore since all they were there for was to cover up the smell of death and fluids they use on a body. I knew what they did to the body. I read Father’s books.

At regular funerals, they played organ music over the loudspeakers that didn’t sound like anything anyone at all liked to hear. And then some preacher would pretend to know the one who died, telling the family things that made no sense to the ones who knew what their loved one was like. And they looked made up like some weird clown with their mouth drawn down in a frown and their body stiff and hard. People would say, “Oh, look how good they look,” and it was nothing but a lie. I’d seen those kinds of funerals. So had Nonna. She instead made sure everyone remembered her just as she was.