Six Feet Over It (21 page)

BITTER, WINTERLIKE COLD
seeps in overnight, and with it, more clients. All old. Jimmy digs sloppy graves left and right for me to finish, and I do; I hose the far-flung dirt and move the flowers, carefully covering the black soil. Alone. I work nonstop before and after school, all weekend; the shoe box beneath my bed has a twin, both crammed with icing-on-the-cake cash. Tens, twenties, fifties. Need more room. A boot box, maybe.

I draw butterflies on the office desk calendar. In flight, wings spread, they creep into the scheduling notes.

Gramma and Grandpa have settled into a comfortable routine. Grandpa’s blue Death Trap Express truck sits covered in dust beside the grave liners. Gramma is content to work on the Last Supper in front of the TV night and day, while Grandpa is thrilled to be given free rein to fix, repair, clean up, and just generally mess around with anything he feels like anywhere in Sierrawood. He is equally delighted to have so many strangers to chat with; as Gramma likes to put it, “That man loves to run his mouth to anyone sorry enough to stand there and listen.”

And thank God, because Real Nice Clambake does not like this Dario-being-gone business.

“Do you know yet?” she asks, her powdered, wrinkled face peering around the office door, not stepping in. “When he’ll be back?”

“Not yet.”

“Have you heard from him?”

I shake my head.

“It’s his family? Someone ill?”

“Yes”—I nod energetically—“but he hasn’t … I’m sure he’ll be back. It won’t be long. Not long now.”

“Not the same without him, is it?”

I shake my head.

“Well.” She nods at the space heaters. “Stay warm.”

Now Grandpa’s out there with her, they talk and laugh and it makes me feel a little better.

Kai is weeding the babies. Weeds growing in such bitter cold—stupid. But they do, crabgrass and just regular longer grasses that need to be pulled out because they look so tacky, especially around the babies. Around mine.

I cannot bear to look toward Emily on Poppy Hill. I am worthless.

I am starting to forget her voice.

The phone rings; it shrieks in the stale office warmth. I nearly die of a heart attack.

I press my open palm to my chest, slow my breath. “Sierrawood Hills, how may I help you?”

“Hello.” Man’s voice.

“Yes,” I sigh. “Hello, can I help you?”

“Hello?”

People, really? Get a decent phone.

“Yes, hello!”

“¿Quién estoy hablando?”

If you don’t know who you’re talking to when you call a cemetery, I probably can’t help you, but I keep up my end of the song and dance. “Uh …
Este es Colinas Sierrawood.”

I am not in the mood for this.

“¿Este es el cementerio?”

“Sí,”
I assure whomever it is.
“
Yes,
este es el cementerio. ¿Cómo puedo ayudarte?”

Silence. But a gravelly one. White noise. A separate conversation happening in the background, too fast, muted, I can’t understand a word.

“Perdón. ¿Hola?”
I say.
“¿Está ahí?”
But they do not respond. Distant laughter. More quiet rapid-fire words.

The line goes dead.

Fantastic. Go get your grave somewhere else, then.

I sleep maybe six or seven minutes all night, restless beside Kai. My broken sleep is punctured by dreams of myself, middle-aged and digging graves alone, single-handedly running Sierrawood and caring for the ten or fifteen feral cats I’ve rescued from behind King Fong’s, which I brought home strapped to the rickshaw I pull behind the bicycle I ride everywhere since I never learned to drive a car. Then dreams of Elanor waiting outside the office door, calling my name over and over; Dario sprints past cacti in vague darkness, pulling a girl in a floating white veil behind him, and she is tripping and pulling him back and then his body twists and stiffens in a hail of bullets. Emily’s barren flower cup, mysteriously full of sweet peas. Emily holding hands with Elanor beneath the trees in Rivendell. I wake over and over, sweating and anxious. Tired.

I give up well before sunrise and go to the bathroom to wash my face. My reflection is startling. With the deep frown lines between my eyebrows, the deep shadows beneath my eyes, and my rapidly declining weight replaced with the weight of the fifty million secrets I’m carrying, I look older than seventy-year-old chain-smoking bitter farmwife from the Ozarks Gramma. So, not real good.

I drag myself downstairs to lie on the sofa, and there she is. Bitter Ozark Farmwife herself. Hair in rollers, TV on, Last Supper on her lap and Rene at her feet. He stands up, barks. Once.

“Oh, shut it!” Gramma hisses at him.

He lies back down.

“What are you doing awake?” she whispers.

I curl up at the other end of the sofa. “Couldn’t sleep.”

She shakes her head. “Kids should have no trouble sleeping; when I was your age, I worked a full day sunup to sundown and fell into bed every night, glad for it!”

I yawn.

She crochets.

“Might be that you’re trying to sleep in a
graveyard.
Could keep a person up.”

She’s got a point.

“And what’s your mother doing up so early? She took off before I even put my teeth in.”

I sigh. “Mendocino.”

“Mendocino what?”

“She goes.”

“To Mendocino?” Gramma asks.

I nod.

“Why?”

I shrug. “All the time.”

“Really?”

I nod.

“Alone?”

“Yep.”

“When’s she coming back?”

I shrug.

She crochets. “Well,” she says.

Amen, sister.

Still.

“She misses it,” I say. “She visits her friends.”

“She ought not to have let your father drag her here, then. This house is ridiculous; it’s a tacky gift shop! I tried to find a cup for my coffee; I’m drinking out of a G.D. seashell!”

I nearly smile.

“All these paintings. This ocean thing, you kids’ names. It’s too much.”

“Not me”—I yawn again—“just Kai.”

“Not you what?”

“My name’s not about the ocean. Kai is.”

She pushes Rene off her lap.

“Do you know what we called you for two months? The Baby. ‘What’s your new granddaughter’s name?’ and I’d be so embarrassed; every time I’d have to go through this whole song and dance, ‘Oh, they haven’t thought of anything yet, blah blah.’
The Baby.
Honestly.” She studies the thread in her hands, unties a knot.

“Because why bother naming me if I was just going to die.”

She shrugs. “I don’t know if it was
that
exactly, but …”

The crochet needle clicks against her wedding ring.

I take a breath.

“Would God really send a little kid to Hell?”

She puts down her crochet hook. Sits and
looks
at me.

“Your father.” She clucks her tongue. “This graveyard business is making me irregular and I can’t abide. But I tell you what. You were born and he stayed beside you night and day for three months. Had to take you in a helicopter to San Francisco, no decent hospitals in Mendocino; then they shipped you where they make the wine …”

“Napa.”

“
Napa.
Kept you in an incubator to finish baking.
Three months.
He barely showered. Left your mom by herself in Mendocino with Kai, wouldn’t let the nurses hold you. They said he just sat there with his hand on you, reading to you all day.”

“No, he did not.”

“Yes, so! He read you every magazine in the waiting room, and then he found a book someone left—that man read the damned
French Lieutenant’s Woman
to you. Out loud.
Twice.
That’s where he got your name.”

“I’m sorry—this is
Wade
we’re talking about?”

“Yes.”

“I’m the French lieutenant’s woman? That is not the ocean.”

“No, not that trashy …
Leigh-on-Sea.
The guy who wrote it was born in a town beside the ocean in England; it’s at the mouth of a river—”

“The Thames?”

“Who knows? But sometimes people call it just Leigh, or Leigh by the Sea. So he decided it meant you next to Kai. Couldn’t go with something nice and simple. Megan. Jane. No. You are Leigh by the Sea.”

I don’t know if I buy this—Wade’s hand on my infant body no bigger than a burrito, reading something that isn’t
Runner’s World
magazine, care and attention for someone who isn’t himself or Kai? Impossible.

The morning news is back on. Rene barks at the newscaster.

“You look horrible, by the way. I can see every bone in your body. What is wrong with you?”

I shrug.

“Do we need to take you to the doctor?”

“I don’t know.”

She shakes her head. Picks up the Last Supper. “How you do
feel
?”

Her hands are gnarled. Age spots, liver spots. But they move easily. The apostles’ faces look so real.

“Bad,” I say truthfully. “I feel awful.”

“Well,” she says, “what are you going to do about it?”

Rene rolls over on his back, paws up. Gramma reaches down and rubs his belly. He squirms. Dog-smiles.

People keep asking me that.

It is a good question.

What am I going to do about it?

I KEEP FORGETTING
to buy Yorks. Selling graves without them is infinitely more difficult; taking The Walk with people nearly impossible. I pull out a stack of Post-its, make a list:

1. Yorks

2. Some G.D. Cheerful Tissue Boxes

3. New Grave Seller

I stick it to the desk calendar on my ballpoint-pen butterflies, where Wade is sure to see it.

It is the last Wednesday of October. One week until my birthday.

Days, weeks worth of homework lounge undone and uncared-about in my backpack. My butterflies are taking over the calendar, so intricate they could leave the paper; the grave files are backed up and disorganized. I couldn’t care less.

The phone rings. I let it go to the machine. Wade’s voice drones in his version of “sensitive and professional” but which is actually super mearonotone and very graveyardish. “Please leave a message at the beep. Thank you, and have a pleasant day.” So lame. If they’re calling here on purpose, odds are their day hasn’t been pleasant so far and will likely get worse once we call them back and they have to come sit here and look at the horrible tissues.

The beep.

Nothing. But
loud
nothing. Not static, sort of amplified ambient room sound. I reach for the button to end the call but then barely audible—voices. I lean toward the speaker.

Spanish.

Howard is being the laziest translator ever, if he thinks—

Spanish.

Whoever he is, he better not call during dinner again.

“Wait!” I plead to no one, grab the receiver. “Hello?”

The voices stop. Loud quiet.

“Dario?”
I whisper.

Dial tone.

My hands shake; I can barely replace the receiver.

The silence presses into my ears, makes me have to yawn, and then—

Singing.

Not from the phone. Outside.

Shirley Jones.

Our hearts are warm, our bellies are full,

And we are feeling prime.

This was a real nice clambake,

And we all had a real good time.

Wednesday.

“A Real Nice Clambake,” the actual song, is cranked up and halfway through its first verse. I stand in the doorway and watch Clambake sit serenely on her sister’s grave.

I do not think, just walk to Clambake and stand there on the grass beside her.

“Hi, sweetie!” she calls above the din, but does not turn it down.

“Hi.” I wait with her.

Throw’d in ribbons of salted pork,

An old New England trick.

Holy cats, this song is complete lunacy. It goes on and on. Clambake smiles vaguely, straightens flowers, polishes her sister’s stone.

BELOVED WIFE, MOTHER, SISTER
JANUARY 30, 1930–MARCH 2, 1975
SINGIN’ IN AN ANGEL’S CHOIR

The engraving’s kind of cornball, but as a rule I forgive corn in old people.

Remember when we raked them red hot lobsters

Out of the driftwood fire?

They sizzled and crackled and sputtered a song

Fittin’ for an angels’ choir.

There’s a bunch more nonsense about clams and gullets, and then at last the
Real good time!
comes blessedly to an end. Clambake presses the stop button on her tape player and stands, brushes grass off her polyester elastic-waist pants.

“Hi, honey!” she says again. “Dario back yet?”

I shake my head.

“Oh,” she says. “Well.” She bends to pick up the sweater she’s sitting on, and her tape player.

Got her on a not-chatty day. Fantastic.

“But I wanted … I wondered, could I ask you something?”

She smiles. “Of course, dear heart, what do you need?”

I have lost most of my momentum getting through the twenty-seven thousand verses of that insane song.

“Um.”

She waits. Smiles.

“Do you … I mean, you come visit a lot?” I’m so lame. She knows I know she’s here every week. But she nods.

I glance down at the headstone.

She shifts her sweater and the radio into her other arm. “Anything else?”

Stupid, stupid song. I was so raring to go ten minutes ago.

She walks slowly to her car. Puts the radio in the trunk and shuts it. I tag along, take a breath, and go at it from another angle.

“If your kid died, would you visit her? Or him?”

She shrugs. “I don’t have any kids.”

I stop myself before blurting, “Oh, really? Why?” I don’t know that I’ve ever met an adult without kids. Do people do that? Seems a practical choice. Or maybe she couldn’t have them. Either way, thank God I didn’t ask why out loud. That is incredibly rude. I really need to think more. Always think first.

Elanor doesn’t think first. Just says what she means.

“Okay,” I say instead. “But if you did. Wouldn’t you come?”

“Well,” she says, “of course. Of course I would. I mean, good grief, I’d hope so. Wouldn’t you?”

I nod.

She tips her head. “Something wrong, sweetheart?”

I shake my head. She moves to get in the car.

“What do you think happens when you die?”

The poor woman. She holds the door handle, stands there for a minute.

“Well, my family is Jewish. So.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t …”

“Oh, well. It’s sort of … you know, the Egyptians were real overboard on death. Mummies, pyramids. Death, death, death. My people hightailed it out of there, and maybe we wanted to be as
not
like them as we could. The Torah just doesn’t talk about it. Death. Or after.”

“But—” I scramble desperately. “Okay, so then—what do
you
think happens? Like, what’s your sister doing? Where is she? You really think she gets lonely?”

She ties a filmy floral-print scarf around her hair.

“You know what?” she says at last. “I just haven’t the foggiest. I really couldn’t say.”

Oh, for crap’s sake. She’s
old
! Where’s the goddamned wisdom and comfort?

“You feeling okay, honey?” I nod but cannot speak for the closing of my throat.

“All righty, then.” She pats my shoulder and gets in her bucket seat, then puts the key in the ignition.

I squeeze my eyes shut and raise my voice. “What about the song?”

She rolls her window down.

“What about it?” she asks.

“How come?”

Now she reaches for my hand and squeezes tight.

“Because she loves it. She
loves
that show. You ever see
Carousel
?” I shake my head. “Well.” She puts the car into gear and rolls slowly toward the gates. “You ought to. Rodgers and Hammerstein. We saw the original cast; our parents took us and oh, was it
wonderful.
We got all dressed up, new coats, brand-new shoes, everything. New York was so exciting then. …” Her eyes are dewy, she is still clutching my hand, and I’m walking fast beside the car as it inches toward the highway. Then she hits the brake hard. “You listen to me, young lady.” She aims an elaborately manicured finger firmly at my face. “There is
nothing
better than a good musical. It’s the best thing there is. You understand?”

I nod.

She smiles, satisfied.

“If you talk to Dario, make sure and tell him Helen misses him!” She waves out the window.

No one else anywhere in the graves. No Wade, not even Jimmy.

Kai running. I think I wish the Rivendell van would come.

I wish I could talk to Elanor.

I wish Dario would come home.

I wish Emily would come home.

Almost completely dark now, I walk in the gloaming. I do not run. I lift my heavy backpack, lock the office, lock the Manderleys, and move forward through the graves, along the road, past Emily.

Where is her mother? She was like a mom to me, too. My mom. Doesn’t she miss me?

“Leigh.”

I stand on the headstone path. Look up.

“What are you doing?” Meredith stands on the porch, silhouetted before the bright living room windows in the fast-fading dusk.

Inside the house, Rene yips.

“Mother, tell that dog to shut up!” Meredith hollers toward the window. “Little bastard,” she mutters, leaning over the porch railing to whack her shoes together. Ocean sand shimmers out; dusty little explosions pour into the grave liners below.

“Leigh.”

When did she come back?

She moves down the porch steps, frowns at me and my frown lines. Takes my backpack off my shoulders, moves me along the headstone path toward the house, to the door. “It’s too dark to be down there so late. Who the hell’s coming at night to get themselves a grave? Rene, shut
up
! Your father is ridiculous. When is Dario coming back?”

I don’t know that I’ve ever heard her say his name out loud.

Over Rene’s yapping there is piano music, a familiar plinking tune from the television. It’s the theme to
Murder, She Wrote,
our favorite show in the world because all the exterior scenes of Angela Lansbury riding her wicker-basketed bicycle along the cliffs above the ocean were filmed not in made-up Cabot Cove, Maine, but in our neighborhood in Mendocino. We search obsessively for reruns just to get a glimpse of our street. Of our beaches.

I love that song.

Unpredictably, my shoulders drop. My stomach drops. The disorienting sensation of standing at the ocean’s edge, retreating waves pulling sand beneath my bare feet, sinking, moving sand in water, unsteady, and tears spill from my tired eyes and do not stop. Actual tears.

It does not feel good. It is not some magical dreamy euphoria. It is kind of dumb.

I sit down hard on the porch steps. Poor Meredith stands for a moment, and then she is beside me. She tosses her shoes at the door, one arm around me, and she pulls my head to her lap and her cool, soft hand pets my hair.

For a long while.

Angela Lansbury is mad about something. I hear her speaking sternly.

Meredith is so small. Not tall. Small around. She is wearing my favorite dark blue sweatshirt she has always worn from when we lived at the ocean, white words printed:
Mendocino Public Library.
It is threadbare, soft as flannel. Meredith is cold and oceany. She smells oceany. Salt and sand. I hold on to her and she doesn’t move away.

I must be cutting off her circulation but still she lets me cling. Her cool fingers find my eyebrows through my mess of tangled hair and massage the crease there. I try hard to breathe. The sun is gone.

“Do I need to buy you a dress?”

I shake my head into her knee.

“Really?”

“Oh my God.” I sigh.
“No.”

She tucks my hair back behind my ears, like she always did at the beach when the wind whipped our hair around and we’d forgotten a hair tie.

“Why are you here?” I ask.

She rubs my back. “Gramma’s bogarting the TV.”

“No,
here.
Not Mendocino.”

“Oh. I don’t know. Just felt like it.”

My nose is running. The silhouetted birds of the depressing office tissue boxes taunt me. I wish I had some right now.

“Well, for Christ’s sake,” Meredith says suddenly, quietly. “Look at that.” She nods at the grave liner below the porch.

Japanese irises are blooming, unfurled and white. In the coldest air we’ve had all month. At night.

I love Japanese irises. Deceptively spindly, bony little stems and a tiny white blossom, they are virtually indestructible. They thrive on being ignored; lack of maintenance only seems to encourage their growth, so they are planted in a lot of ugly places: highway medians, parking lots. But still they are beautiful. Even here, reaching up into the dark and the cold from a cement casket.

“Huh,” she says. “What the hell.” And still she doesn’t move.

I cry on her some more and never say what the waves roll over and over in my exhausted mind:
I will never get out of here.

She rubs my head and pets my hair and lets me stay.

Eventually I get up. Untangle myself from her.

“Leigh,” she calls.

I turn back.

“You should eat something.”

I nod.

“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

I go upstairs, take a bath, and crawl into bed beside Kai.

I reach into my drawer for my flashlight and line everyone up: Emily’s face. My Catrina. My grave digger. I close the drawer and sleep. Hard. Long into the morning, through my first two classes. When I finally wake up, my head aches from crying so much. From crying at all.

On the kitchen counter, there is an excuse note for the school secretary about a fake dental appointment written in Meredith’s unmistakable penmanship.

Late afternoon I am still sleeping. The cold sun blinds me, spills from the hallway onto my face when Kai opens the door.

“Hey. Are you sick?”

I shake my head.

“Because Dad says to say, ‘Where the hell are you?’ Did you even go to school?”

My head is killing me.

Her cheeks are pink; she is radiating cold and an unfamiliar urgency. She drops a pile of mail and junk on my dresser. “He’s in the office totally out of control. He had to do an At Need, and he made me get the mail. What are you doing?”