Zen and Xander Undone (21 page)

“Besides, it's only a lower-grade black belt. You're not a master.”

“I know.”

“A master could've gotten away from that Topher kid, hurt back or no hurt back.”

“I know, Mom!”

“And now here you are, staring at the crack in the ceiling, talking to your dead mother, who is very angry with you.”

“I was defending my friend!”

“You escalated an already violent situation,” she says.

“What do you want? Want me to prostrate myself and beg for forgiveness?”

“You're already prostrate, and no. I just want you to learn this lesson. You've been pushing your body too far. Every time you're almost better, you do something to hurt yourself again.”

“You know, Xander's the one who got us into this.”

“Xander's unraveling in her way, you're unraveling in yours.”

“I'm the only one in the family who's held it together!”

“Oh yeah? How many fights did you get in
before
I died?”

This stops me. For a second I forget that I'm having a fight with Mom, and I just think. This is what Mark meant when he asked if I'd used my skill to good purpose. Maybe I wasn't really protecting my friends so much as looking for an excuse to let my anger out.

Even if Mom has a point, that doesn't mean I have to admit anything. “Xander's still acting crazier than I am. I don't know why you're not lecturing her!”

“Oh, she's getting a lecture, all right.”

“You talk to her? Because she insists there's no such thing as ghosts.”

“Hey! I resent that. I'm a spirit, not a ghost!”

“What's the difference?”

“This is not a haunting.”

“Okay. Whatever.”

I open my eyes to the lines of light on the ceiling drawn there by my blinds. Particles of dust float, twinkling, and I imagine that Mom is one of them, floating around, enjoying her weightlessness.

“What's it like to be dead?”

“It's apart. I'm apart. But I'm here.”

“Like you're on the other side of a wall?”

“More like I'm on the other side of time.”

“What does it feel like?”

“Like I'm underwater, or in an envelope of water, and I'm looking at all of you moving around in the air. I'm held by the water, I'm part of the water, and I can't get out of it, but it's soothing, and warm, and it feels nice. So I've learned to accept it.”

“I wish I could see you.”

“I know.” I feel a whisper of air against my cheek, and I imagine that she has kissed me. “Your father is coming out of his funk.”

“Yeah. He looks much better.”

“You guys are going to be okay.”

I watch the light cast through the shimmery leaves as it dances on my bedroom wall. Mom and I painted that wall a pale peach five summers ago, before she got sick. It was fun painting with Mom, changing the color of my room, listening to the radio as we worked. She taught me a song. “Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me.” She would knock on the ceiling as she sang it, and Dad would call from downstairs for us to be quiet.

“That was a fun day,” she says, her voice a wisp of shadow in my ear.

Suddenly I hate this. I hate that I have to communicate with her in fluttering leaves and shadows. It's so unfair, I want to explode something.

“You seem angry,” Mom whispers.

“You're right. I'm angry at
you!
”

“Say what?”

“You lied to us! You lied to us about John Phillips!”

“It's not as bad as you're thinking.”

“Why did you do it? Why did you cheat on us? Why did you have to die?”

“Well, for god's sake—I tried not to!”

“That's not good enough.” I'm surprised by the sound of my voice. I didn't mean to speak aloud.

She sighs. “Honey. Honey, I'm sorry.”

“I know,” I say in my mind. Tears burn my eyelids. I press my fist to my forehead and stiffen up my whole body. My tense muscles fire rapid shots of pain through my spine, but I ignore it. I don't want to cry. I
won't.

“Just let it come,” Mom says, and I feel her presence moving over me, under me, smoothing me over.

But is she? Is she
really?

Is she here with me, or is she a figment of my imagination?

“Are you real?”

Silence. Only birdsong fluttering through my window.

Of course she isn't real. I've known this for a long time. I knew her well enough when she was alive that I can imagine anything she might say to me, in any situation.

Mom isn't here.

Mom is just gone, and I can't keep doing this to myself. I can't keep imagining things that aren't there.

Everything in me releases. I turn over, my face jammed into my pillow, and I cry.

I cry alone.

“N
O WAY.
No way in hell.” Dad sets down his spoon, which is still full of lukewarm, sticky oatmeal, and points in Xander's face for emphasis. “I just want to make myself clear. There is
literally no way
I'm letting you two out of my sight for the rest of the summer. And I'm certainly not loaning you my very expensive European car for a road trip to an unspecified location.”

“Maine!” Xander yells. “We were thinking Maine. There. It's specified.”

“Young women who engage in illicit drug use do not deserve to borrow luxury automobiles.”

“Well, perhaps if I'd had adequate supervision . . .” she says, just to play the guilt card.

“Oh, so you admit you need supervision, do you?”

This shuts her up.

My turn. I rest my elbows on the worn wood of our kitchen table. “Dad, we just want to be together for a few days, just us girls, before Xander leaves for Pasadena. We're not planning on doing anything crazy.”

He laughs at this. “Crazy people don't make plans. The shit flies on its own.”

“So we're crazy?” Xander asks. She's trying to act offended to put Dad on the defensive, but not even this works.

“Look. It's simple. You're to stay in town for the rest of the summer.” He drops his bowl in the sink, shoulders his satchel, and starts toward the door. He's been getting up at eight o'clock every morning, and he's off to the library by ten. He stays there for at least four hours, and then he comes home with a stack of books and pages of careful notes. He's working again, on an article, he says, but he has also hinted it could be the first chapter of a new book about Yeats. A critical biography, he's calling it. The color has come back to his cheeks, and he seems much more awake than he has for a long time. Our trouble at the party seemed to snap him completely out of his funk. It's nice to have him back.

“I'm sorry, girls,” he says as he backs out of the door, his overgrown bangs hanging in his eyes. “I love you, but I have to say no to this.”

“Well, that's full of piss,” Xander spits.

“Watch your language, little miss,” he shoots back, and closes the door behind him.

We're quiet. I trace a yellow patch of sunlight that slants across the table. The kitchen is bright, just like when Mom used to be alive. It's strange that I think of it that way—that it's been dark in here for almost a year, but that's how it feels. It's like the house was bathed in a gray shadow, and now that Dad's come up from the basement, the sun is allowed to come in the windows. We're moving forward through time again.

Xander drops her spoon into her shredded wheat, picks it up again, and drops it. Milk splashes out onto the blue plaid tablecloth. “Well,” I begin.

“Who do we know with a car?” She raises her eyebrows.

“I don't think we should just
drive
there.”

“Do what you want. I'm eighteen years old.”

I did not think of that, but it's true. Technically, she's an adult. She can legally leave and there's nothing Dad can do about it. I'm a different matter, though. “He might never forgive us if we defy him.”

“He'll forgive us. He has to. He's our dad.”

We're quiet for a long time while we think. When the kitchen starts to get hot from the sun, we move onto the front porch and sit on the creaky wicker chairs. I put my hand on the armrest and it comes away with a spider web stuck to my fingers. I ball up the fibers and try to flick them away, but they keep clinging to me.

I hear a door slam and look to see that Adam has come out of his house. He still has the pale blue splint on his face to protect his nose. He notices us and freezes. Out of the corner of my eye I see Xander straightening up. We stare at each other like that until I finally wave at him to break the spell. “How's your nose?” I call.

He shrugs. “Okay. Not great.”

“Will it heal purdy?” Xander asks him in her hillbilly accent.

The tension evaporates. He half smiles, and slowly crosses the street. As he comes up our porch stairs I see that the bruises under his eyes are faded to yellow. “The doctor says it was a clean break. It should heal okay.”

“That's good,” Xander says. She gives him a shy smile.

I have to look at her again.

Yes, I would definitely characterize the smile on her face as a shy one. Demure, even.

Adam smiles at her too, but his smile is sad. Wistful.

“So, know anywhere we can steal a car?” Xander asks him.

He raises one eyebrow at her. “Already breaking the law again?”

“Adam.” She pauses for a moment, her eyes soulful and deadly earnest. “I can't go to college without putting this thing to rest.”

His smile fades. He thoughtfully scratches at the tip of his nose, just under the splint. “You know, my dad has an extra car.”

This gets her attention. “Would it make it a thousand miles?”

“Yeah. He uses it on the weekends for road trips. I'm sure it would be fine.”

“Would he loan it to you?” I ask.

“He cut my visit last month short so he could take Melissa to Hawaii.” He says her name as though speaking about poison. “He feels guilty enough that he might.”

For the first time since the party, Xander smiles with that devilish glint in her eyes. “Want to go to Wisconsin?”

“Have I ever told you how much cheddar cheese means to me?” he replies with a crooked smile.

The phone inside rings, and Xander pops up to get it. My back is feeling much better today, but popping up is still beyond me. Adam is looking at the tree in our yard, watching a robin on the bottom branch. It seems like the bird is watching him too. I wonder if he's remembering Beverly. He probably is. Of anyone I know, Adam cares the most. About everything.

“Thanks, Adam,” I say, without stopping to think of how strange it might sound.

He looks at me quizzically.

“You brought her back,” I tell him, by way of explanation.

He smiles at this, but he says nothing.

“Paul's coming over,” Xander says as she slams out through the screen door.

“Thanks for asking first.” I struggle out of my chair. “I need a shower.”

“Hurry!” she calls after me.

At the bottom of the stairs I look back over my shoulder to see Adam taking my chair. He leans toward Xander tentatively, and she lets him.

Paul is already here when I come back down, freshly showered, in my tank top and khaki shorts. The three of them are already cooking up plans.

Paul has an atlas draped over his lap. “If you drove in shifts you could make it there in a day,” he says. When he sees me, he stands up, forgetting the atlas, and it slides to the floor. “Hi.”

“Hi.” I take a step closer to him and brush my fingertips gently across the bruise on his cheekbone where Frank hit him. It feels so natural to touch him, I don't even notice how exhilarating it is until after I've done it. He takes my hand and holds it to his chest, smiling.

“Hey! What time is it?” Xander has stood up and is peering through the living room curtains at the mantel clock.

“We can make it,” Adam says.

We all step off the porch, Paul behind us. “Where are we going?” he asks me.

“It's a tradition,” I tell him. It feels so right to have Paul as part of our group, I have to grab his hand and swing it between us as we walk. I'm too happy not to.

Xander and Adam walk a lot faster than I can go, but I don't mind, because Paul hangs back with me. I've wanted to be alone with him ever since that awful night. “I never told you thanks.”

“For what?”

“For what you did that night. You were so cool-headed. And”—I take in a deep breath of velvety summer air—“mature. You were mature. Much more grown up than anyone else. I just made things worse, but you got us out of there.”

“Not without that bastard hurting your back,” he says angrily.

“That wasn't your fault.”

He nods, his eyes on Xander and Adam.

They're walking an arm's length apart, Xander's long legs moving like a dancer's as she matches her stride to his. Adam has his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and he's hanging his head as he talks to her. For the first time since Mom died, they seem to be listening to each other.

“Those two,” Paul says, his eyes on them, thoughtful. “They're great.”

“Great?”

“Together, I mean,” he says.

I watch him for a second, his hazel eyes, the bright sun on his skin. When he looks at me, I know what he's thinking. We're great too.

We let go of each other's hands to climb the stairs on the railroad bridge. Adam and Xander are already standing there, staring at the horizon. We take our places next to them, and Paul lets his eyes wander over the rusty train cars strewn on the tracks underneath us. “This place is beautiful,” he says in quiet awe. “You can see forever from here.”

That's what I've always loved about the bridge over the railroad. It feels timeless to be among the treetops, and removed somehow from what happens in normal time. Looking at Paul, Xander, and Adam, their faces alight with anticipation as they watch for the train, I feel that I'm seeing their essences, who they are, or who they'll be when everything is finally stripped away and we all join Mom, wherever she is.