Love Letters to the Dead

“So I never really thanked you for the night at the party. And the night at the bridge. And all of that. Thank you. For being there.”


“You’re welcome. I’m glad that you let me.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Do you see her when you look at me? I mean May?”

“No. I see Laurel.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you even love me? I mean, why did you?”

“Because—because you remind me of my first concert. The one I told you about on New Year’s. You remind me of the feeling of wanting to make something.”

My heart twirled around in my chest when he said that, and it wanted to leap into his arms.

“Listen,” he went on, “I’m sorry that I took so long to tell you all of that stuff about May. And I’m sorry that I said it the way I did. But I don’t want you to think … I mean, the way I felt about you, I’ve never felt that way about a girl before. Not your sister or anyone.”

“You know how you said May didn’t have an easy time in high school or whatever? I just always thought that it was different from that. Why didn’t she ever tell me?”

“You were her little sister. She probably wanted to protect you from all of that stuff. She probably wanted you to look up to her.”

Maybe he was right. I thought about the lengths that she went to to make me believe she had wings when we were kids. Maybe May had needed me as much as I needed her. She needed the way I saw her, the way I loved her. “Do you think that I didn’t know her?” I asked. “What if I didn’t really know her?”

“Of course you knew her. You knew her for your whole life. Nothing changes who she was to you. Maybe it’s just when you get older, you understand things that you couldn’t before.”

“I think that after my parents split up, she must have been really angry at them. I mean, my mom spent May’s whole life telling her how she brought our family together. So she must have felt betrayed. Even though of course it wasn’t her fault, maybe she felt like it was. So maybe she was angry at herself, too.”

Sky said, “When she used to talk to me, she’d talk about you sometimes. How she hoped that growing up would be so much easier for you.”

I smiled to think of her saying that, but of course it wasn’t easy. I guess it’s not for anybody. The truth was too sad to feel right away. May couldn’t see how she was letting me get hurt, because she was hurting, too.

“I just want to go back in time and tell her that she could talk to me. That I would understand. That it could get better.”

“I know,” Sky said.

“The only thing I liked about that story you told me,” I said to Sky, “was Paul getting beat up. But I’m sorry that you got kicked out of school. That wasn’t fair.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It wasn’t fair what happened to you, either. Or what happened to her. A lot of things aren’t. I guess we can either be angry about it forever or else we just have to try to make things better with what we have now.”

I looked at him. “Yeah,” I said. “You’re right.”

I didn’t know if I would ever kiss Sky again or not, but it was nice to be able to talk about May with someone who knew her.

I looked up at your In Utero poster, with the picture of the winged woman with the see-through skin, watching Sky and me from the wall. I thought about how for a long time, I wanted to be soaring above the earth. I wanted Sky to see me as perfect and beautiful, the way I saw May. But really, we all just have these blood and guts inside of us. And as much as I was hiding from him, I guess part of me also always wanted Sky to see into me—to know the things that I was too scared to tell him. But we aren’t transparent. If we want someone to know us, we have to tell them stuff.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear Allan Lane,

On the way home after school today, Aunt Amy turned to me and asked, “Would you like to come to dinner with Ralph and me tonight?” (Ralph, aka the Jesus Man.)

He never comes to the house, at least not when I’m there, but she’s been seeing him, and the rose soap in the shower has turned into a diminishing pink disk. Maybe after I told her about Sky, she wanted to open up to me, too. Maybe inviting me along was part of her trying to be closer with me, I thought, so I agreed.

When we got home, Aunt Amy went about getting ready, dabbing rose oil behind her ears and taking a faded flower dress out of the dry cleaner bag.

We met Ralph at Furr’s. I thought it was weird that he didn’t pick us up or something, but I didn’t ask any questions. We got there first and waited for him by the door. Finally he walked up with a swagger and kissed Aunt Amy on the cheek. He was wearing knockoff Birkenstocks, jeans with a suit jacket, and had long hair that was scraggly and wavy, as if he were literally trying to look like Jesus.

He shook my hand and said, “You must be Laurel.”