Six Feet Over It (15 page)

“Clambake,”
she says. Snorts.

“You don’t have to stay inside for customers?”

She waves away a fluttering moth. “I’ll hear the bells, and my parents will be back in a minute. She’s fine with Dario. Rest for a minute.”

I hover. My hands are damp.

“It’ll hold us. Trust me.”

Won’t hold the weight of my guilt. Emily all alone at Sierrawood.

But maybe just for a minute?

I give in, lower myself beside her.

The trees reach endlessly up, near blackness in the thick redwood branches. I close my eyes.

“I don’t know how you can wear jeans in this heat,” she says. “I would die.”

“Yeah,” is all I can think to say.

“Though I am the person who wears skirts in the middle of winter, so what am I even talking about?”

I watch our shadows sweep back over the grass as we swing. Forward. Back. Forward. I should say something.

My heart races.

“Did you make that skirt?” I ask.

She nods. “Blouse, too. Kind of screwed up the buttonholes, but you can’t really tell unless you look closely. …” She pulls a pearl button toward me, snug in what seems to be a perfectly stitched hole.

“Pretty color.”

“I am absolutely in love with every shade of lilac and lavender. I spend all my paychecks on fabric; it drives my mom nuts. We’ve got similar coloring, you and me … You ever wear anything violet?”

Either she does not notice or is being really kind and pretending not to notice that I am wearing the same jeans and one of maybe five T-shirts every time she sees me.

Too smart not to notice.

Kai’s
got “coloring.”
She
is beautiful in anything. I could never wear a color like that. Violet.

“I knitted these,” she says, lifting her leg to pull at the thin blue-and-purple-striped socks inside her boots. “I just started. I got this book and some yarn and I thought it was going to be really complicated, but it turns out, knitting? Just rows and rows of knots. It’s very meditative. You should try it; you could knit in the office.”

“I’m allergic to wool.”

“Oh, me too! It’s awful, gives me hives. But these are cotton, not scratchy at all.”

“Huh.”

We swing.

“Do you really work as much as Kai says you do?”

I nod.

“Do you
want
to?”

I think of the baby. “Sometimes there’s things people need that … things only I can do. I don’t always mind.”

We swing some more.

“He’s a pretty … compelling guy. Wade.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re Cordelia.”

“Sorry?”

“Yeah,” she says, “to his Lear. Except there’s only two sisters and Kai’s not a total hussy, but other than that. Definitely Cordelia.”

Shakespeare. But I don’t remember.

She closes her eyes, swings the hammock. “Cordelia is King Lear’s youngest daughter. He disowns her for telling the truth; it’s like he
wants
her to lie, but she’s all, ‘Sorry, I can’t!’ So he says she’s dead to him. Super harsh.”

“What won’t she lie about?”

“How much she loves him.”

In the mill house, Clambake laughs.

“Does she?” I ask.

“What?”

“Love her dad.”

“Oh yes. A ton. Just—not enough for him.”

“Huh.”

“It’s hard for Lear because Cordelia is his favorite.”

“Well,” I sigh, “I’m not Wade’s favorite. Wade is Wade’s favorite.”

Another moth, white, flutters around our heads. Elanor holds her hand up, encourages it to land. It flies into my hair, then up into the redwood branches.

“So what happens?” I ask.

“Cordelia ends up dead because of Lear’s selfish stupidity, and he goes completely out of his nut wandering the heath alone, railing at the wind.”

I imagine Wade alone in his Japanese flag shorts, spinning across the green heath of Sierrawood.

“Okay.” She sits up. “I’m going to apologize first but ask anyway, even though my mom has said never to, and I’m sure a million people have already asked you a billion times already, but is it … How is it?”

“What?”

“Living there. Selling graves. Is it … I mean, is it sad?”

On the surface, a self-evident question. But she is the first person ever to ask.

I lean carefully back against the ropes.

“Yes,” I say. “Sometimes.”

“But not always?”

“And sometimes it’s hard for me to leave.”

“Like … ?”

“I mean, like, if someone’s really … if they’re having a hard time.”

“Oh, right,” she says. “Yikes.”

“If they’re having a hard time. They need …”

“Sure.”

“Just takes a while sometimes.”

We push with our feet. The hammock swings.

“You are so brave,” she says.

Dario dares to drive the actual speed limit all the way back to the graves, lest we get back two seconds past his lunch hour. His hands at nine and three.

I lean my head against the door, and the wind through the truck windows moves my hair off my shoulders and around my face, the ribbons around Kai’s Elanor-wrapped birthday necklace silkily over my hands.

In the morning I sign up for summer school driver’s ed.

ON THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL
I watch Caroline sloppily make out against her locker with a greasy-haired metal-shop guy with a humongous tongue, all the sexy romance of a dog eating spaghetti. She and Lisa signed each other’s yearbooks in the throng of laughing, happy kids in the quad messing around, throwing tortillas like Frisbees.
What a waste of good food. People are starving.

“Hey.” Lisa’s voice is a siren behind me. She yanks me around by my shoulder. “Stare much?”

“Sorry,” I mumble, and move to escape her long reach, but she gets one last shove in; I stumble toward a garbage can, find my footing. Walk fast.

“Run all you want, freak. We know where you live!” Caroline laughs.

As always, Kai is nowhere. Probably already gone, safe at Rivendell with Balin. I empty my locker as fast as I can. I ask the librarian to sign my yearbook, and Mrs. McKinstry, who writes, “Have a lovely summer, don’t read too much ha ha but seriously … don’t.”

Through the tall black Manderleys, the impending three years of high school—the rest of my death-infused life—yawn endless before me, dark, scary, and lonely.

Oh, Emily.

“Leigh!”

A loud whisper. Dario crouches beside the pond.

“Hurry! Come here, quick!” I drop my backpack in a sullen lump. He makes room for me in the tall grass, pulls it gently aside.

“Hi!” Elanor whispers, hidden in the reeds beside him.

“What are you guys—?”

“Shhhh!”

“Look how tiny!”

A late batch of ducklings, black and yellow balls of softest fuzz, big bees with feet. They softly peep, skimming the water, and we are still, watching them zoom around looking for bugs, kicking up tiny arcs of cool pond water, followed closely by their attentive mother.

“It’s going to be a good summer,” Dario declares, stepping back carefully. He helps me to my feet, lifts my pack off the ground, and offers Elanor his other hand. “Right?”

“Yes!” she says.

“You just wait.” He smiles at me. “I can tell.”

The headstones gleam in the afternoon heat.

“Because of your highly tuned perceptivity and insight about summer fun?” I ask.

“Listen,” he says, “if I don’t bring the superior Mexican wisdom to you people, you’ll never make it.”

Wade crests the rise of Serenity Valley on the riding lawn mower, waves, dips back down.

“What are you doing? Are you in the office all summer?” Dario asks pointedly.

I nod.

“Every day?” Elanor says.

“Pretty much.”

“You cannot spend your entire summer vacation selling graves!” Dario barks.

“You’d be surprised.”

“It isn’t good for you.”

“Tell Wade that.”

“
You
tell him!” he says. “Get out of here, do something fun!”

“Oh, okay.”

“Go somewhere with Elanor!”

“Yeah!” she says. “Let’s!”

“Hey.” Dario suddenly turns to her. “Does Balin drive?”

“My parents won’t let him.”

“Why?”

“He’ll be ready when he’s thirty and calms himself down.”

“Does he
want
to?”

She shrugs. “Dunno. But
I
do.”

He gives me a “See? Told you!” look.

“I have to get to work,” I sigh.

“Can I come in for a minute? I’ve got something for you,” Elanor calls over her shoulder, marching off to the flower van, which is parked at the mausoleum.

I shrug my pack on and head for the office. Dario walks beside me, pulling gloves on, a hat over his black curls.

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod.

“Really?”

“What’s up with the ‘going somewhere’ stuff right in front of her?” I whisper.

“All right, okay, sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t fair, I don’t—”

“Leigh.”

“What?”

He lifts the backpack off my shoulder and pulls me in for an “everything’s going to be all right” hug.

I drop my arms, close my eyes, and let him.

From the office doorway, I watch him walk through the headstones, pull a clutch of roses from an embarrassment of floral riches on a grave in a neighboring row, and settle them into Emily’s tin cup. He pulls a few weeds from beneath her stone, brushes it off.

Butterflies.

“Okay, got it!” Elanor makes her way through the babies. I leave the door open and fall into my chair.

She lays a flat package on my desk calendar, same tissue as Kai’s sea glass.

A skirt. Two skirts.

“I wanted to make you tops, too, but that’s a lot harder without measurements, so—you’re skinny and skirt patterns are easy to draw.”

One is the same violet as her blouse, the other pale blue. Perfect tiny stitches, a neat pair of pleats runs the length from the waist to the hem.

“They’re cotton-poly. I preshrank them so they’ll stay that size, which actually is only good if they fit—”

The fabric is so soft but crisp, brand-new, perfect.

I shift in my chair, the tired denim of my Emily jeans familiar, worn thin.

Elanor sits in a wingback.

“I shouldn’t have made you
clothes
without asking. It’s weird, I’m sorry. I
do
need to think first—”

“They’re beautiful,” I say. “They’re … I love them.”

Her face lights up. “Really?”

“Really. I do. Thank you.”

“Well …” She is smiling so hard. “That’s—I’m so glad!”

I pull out the Yorks. “Care for a mint?”

“Even though I’m not buying a grave?”

“I’ll make an exception.”

She accepts a gracious handful. “My
favorite.
”

“Are they really?”

“There is nothing better,” she says, “than a York.”

I have no idea which T-shirt is going to go with these colors.

Dario has decided he needs to demonstrate the delightful health benefits of “going somewhere and doing something fun” by taking advantage of a burial-free Monday for an overnight fishing trip on the Sacramento delta.

I sit on the trailer steps in the early-morning chill, Christmas lights still on, to half-watch him pack while making my way through a stapled pile of work sheets from the new bane of my existence, summer school driver’s ed. Five months until my birthday, it’ll take that long just to work up the nerve to actually get behind the wheel. But I want so badly to please him, and the news of my reluctant enrollment made him so happy he nearly fell over. Still, I find myself unable to fake any enthusiasm for the inevitable deaths of me and several unsuspecting strangers.

“Okay,” I say flatly. “Four people all come to a four-way stop at the same time. Who goes first?”

He tosses a pair of rolled-up socks at his backpack and stuffs them around the edges, tries to ESP the correct answer to me. I wait five seconds and flip to the answer page. “The person on your right.”

“Whose right?”

“Um. That’s all it says: ‘
Your
right.’ Everyone’s, I guess.”

He shakes his head and folds a T-shirt in with the socks. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Whatever, dude,” I sigh. “I’m just telling you what it says.” I am done trying to get him off my back about this.

The class is completely terrible, mainly because of the films—a bunch of cheaply made cautionary tales that fuel my fear, featuring irresponsible teen drivers listening to music too loud who drive stupidly across train tracks, ignoring clanging bells and flashing warning lights, the last shot invariably a close-up of one of the kids’ faces, fake-horrified and screaming, bathed in red brake lights against a backdrop of car-crash sound effects: screeching, metal slamming into itself, shattering glass, and … credits! Words roll over blood thickly trickling down a desolate storm drain:
Brought to you by the California State Automobile Association.

I described these to Dario and to Wade (who is thrilled he may soon have a legally licensed driver to do all his errands for him and keep Dario off the road) and tried to impress upon them both the anxiety even just the idea of driving is causing me, which prompted Wade’s “Don’t be so dramatic!” and Dario’s “Keep studying.”

Kai still resolutely refuses to join me, preferring instead, as any sensible person would, to hang out at Rivendell and run with Balin. Wade and Meredith let her, all the while enthusiastically encouraging my enrollment in Dario’s Graveyard Driving School. I try hard not to let all Kai’s “Get Out of Driver’s Ed and Anything Else You Don’t Want to Do” free passes make my jealousy burn even brighter.

From the steps, I see that Dario’s tiny kitchen table, normally impeccably free of clutter, is covered with an assortment of things: glass jars of colored water, little pots of paint, blank white cards, envelopes, stamps. A mess. He drops a travel-size toothpaste into a single sock, his version of a toiletry bag.

“I’ll teach you,” he says. “You get your permit, we’ll drive all over Sierrawood so when you drive with the actual teacher, you’re extra prepared and confident. Right?”

“We’ll see.”

“We’ll
see
?”

“Maybe I’ll fail the written and I won’t even be allowed to.
Person on your right.
You never know.”

“Oh, I
know.
You’ll pass that test and I’ll meet you in the driveway.” His bag, and the subject, are closed.

I watch him walk through the trees, off to the bus stop and away from the graves, to cool blue lake water and sleeping in a tent.

Up the stairs to my room, I step out of my Emily jeans, fold them on the hamper. On the highest shelf in my closet are the Elanor skirts, still folded in their tissue.

Gray Sierrawood T-shirt, so … blue skirt. Not ready for violet. Cotton still soft, pleats sharp, crisply ironed. Simple. Barely noticeable A-line. I can do this.

I tie my plain off-brand canvas sneakers. I put my hair up, grab a few books and an orange from the kitchen, and walk past the trees, past the graves, past Emily, to the office. Wearing a skirt. A skirt Elanor made. For me.

Everything is still early-morning quiet; not even Wade is out yet. I pull at the pleats, mess with the zipper—leave it alone.

My legs, hidden so long in my Emily jeans, are pasty. And bony. They will not be slated to stroll a catwalk anytime ever, but they feel free. Light.

I read. People trickle in to visit graves, but no one comes to me. I turn on my desk fan; warm air circles around my bare knees. I fall deeper into my book and so am jarred by the opening door, a cheerful guy’s face peering around it.

“Hi there … Leigh?” he asks.

I worry the hem around my seated knees.

“Can I help you?”

“If you’re Leigh.” He steps in, clipboard in one hand, gorgeous bouquet in the other.

“Oh,” I say, “you can just take it out to the grave if you want. Here’s a map. …”

“Are you Leigh?”

I nod.

“Okay then, sign here for me. …” He holds the clipboard before me, sets the flowers in a glass vase right on my desk calendar. I scribble my initials; he climbs back in his van.

Lavender and violet and white blossoms and slender green reeds and ferns, all my favorites bending in the breeze from the fan: cosmos, impatiens, wax flowers. Not Rivendell.

But there is my name in black ink on the card envelope.

No one has ever given me flowers, not ever.

The card is embossed with larks taking flight in a pale blue sky.

This is a hard day for you. See you tomorrow.

Ser valiente. Be brave.

About what? I read it again and again. Why is today hard?

I stand in the doorway and look out at the graves.

My face flushes hot.

I didn’t forget. I would never forget. I just—

Forgot.

She died this day. This beautiful June day marked by what I have let slip beneath my own selfishness, beneath cotton polyester fabric sewn by someone who is not her, who will never be her.

Em/i/ly. El/a/nor.

I walk, stiff-legged and fast, past Wade at the shed, over the headstone path into the house, up the stairs to yank the skirt off, toss it in the closet, pull my Emily jeans back on.

I sit on the corner of my bed, heart racing, and catch my breath.

Back to the office.

Door wide open, fan still blowing.

The flowers are luminous in the murk of the wood paneling.

Ser valiente.

Days and weeks have turned into an entire year.

This is a hard day for you.

She is never coming back.