Six Feet Over It (20 page)

“Okay,
what
?”

“Ana is coming.”

My chest constricts. “Okay.”

“To live.
Here.
”

My this-is-no-big-deal casualness is wearing thin.

“She’ll like the paint,” I say. “Wade’ll be thrilled.”

“I have to go get her.”

“Sure.”

“I have to
go get
her.”

“Okay.”

He pantomimes
travel
with his roller. “I have to go there and get her.”

“Okay!”

He sets the roller in the tray.

“Leigh. I have to
go
there, to
Mexico,
and
get her.
I have to get her
out
of there. I have to bring her back here with me. The same way I came the first time. Same as before.”

I wish I hadn’t turned James off.

“Please don’t tell anyone. Please. Okay?”

Wet paint on a wall can very easily look stripy. It takes a lot of concentration to get it even. Up, across. Up. Across. Even strokes. Back and forth. Over and over.

“Leigh. I need your help.”

Even I understand going back in and coming back across—with another person in tow. Even I know that is dicey at best, completely dangerous at worst. Impossible.

“People do it all the time,” he says. “They work here for a while, they go home, visit back and forth. They do. All the time.”

I swallow. Make a genuine effort not to be sick. “When?”

“Soon.”

“How long will it take?”

“Not long. Two, three weeks. Maybe. Not long.”

His uncertainty makes me mad. A person needs to be confident when planning to do something on purpose that may or may not involve them being killed, otherwise—it
really
pisses me off.

“What’re you telling Wade?”

“Sacramento. That I’m meeting family there, staying for some kind of emergency.”

“Great.”

I pick up my roller. Paint. Kind of angrily.

“You can buy me time if you don’t tell anyone anything; I’ll be back as quickly as I can. But if something happens, if I can get to a phone, will you—”

There is a piercing ringing in my ears. I put my roller in the tray, pick up a brush, and cut in the corners around the windows.

He takes the brush from my hand. Holds it in his.

“We’re getting married. At my parents’ house in Pátzcuaro, and then after … then my cousin Aurillo will pick us up in San Diego and we’ll come home.”

All this spilled in one breath. Freezing waves of
I am so stupid
knock me down, drag me under.

“Okay, so then she
is
your girlfriend.”

“Leigh.”

“Is she asking you to do this? Can’t someone else bring her over?”

“No, it’s not—She’s not asking. She’s only doing it for me. If it goes badly, it’s going to be my fault.”

“Goes badly?”

“Just … not how we plan.”

“Why not just stay there with her?” I choke through my swollen throat. “She’s your
wife.
Or whatever. Doesn’t she get a vote?”

He looks exhausted. “She
wants
to come; she wants to
be
here. It’s just the getting across … but it’s not impossible. I want her with me. Here.”

I bite the inside of my cheek and taste blood.

“I’m coming back. I will.”

The blue’s fumes are making my head swim in this new universe where people have secret girlfriends in faraway places and risk deportation to bring them to live in graveyards. Everything is nothing, sea grass floating aimlessly in the water, no rock, no seabed to anchor to.

Everyone good always leaves. Or dies.

There are a million ways I can try to help. I can promise to be the one to fix it, take care of things here, assure him that
Yes, yes, of course I will help you,
a million kind, comforting things I can say. But now it is too late; all I see are his boots down in the grave beside my feet, his hand holding mine to take me from Emily to the safety of the Christmas lights, the flowers he brings to Emily, the flowers he gave to me, no more Christmas lights, alone in the graveyard while I sleep, or don’t.

“Please don’t go.”

“I’ll be back.”

“You won’t.

“I
will.
”

His shoulders, his arms again and again holding the weight of my aching head, my sadness, my selfish, lonely heart.

Two days later he is gone.

“DARIO’S GOT SOME
kind of family hoopla going on,” Wade barks from the bathroom door. Kai and I stand brushing our teeth at the sink. A very official Sierrawood employee meeting. “We’re all going to pitch in and keep things running till he’s back.”

He is gone for good. Happy at home in the warm sun and trees of Pátzcuaro with the butterflies in their oyamel forests. He’s living out his autobiography called
Dario’s Wonderful Life Not in a Graveyard,
home where he never has to dig graves for strangers, only for people he knows, for family.

It’s only been days, but I know this. I
know
it.

October is cold and the office is freezing. I huddle over the heaters with my old frenemy Ovid, reading nearly on autopilot. I still hate him, but I can’t help reading it again, searching for the comfort Elanor was so certain of but I could never see. Familiar if nothing else. Ovid will never leave me, no matter how many overdue fees I rack up.

Elanor.

I watch Kai out in the graves with the leaf blower, willingly giving up a couple of Rivendell afternoons each week because it is for Dario, so she is being very lemons-into-lemonade about it.

Wade is “pitching in” by screwing up all my headstone files while I’m at school, chewing all my pen caps, and eating all my Yorks. He grumbles and crabs around and complains to cover up how much he misses Dario. “Can’t make a ding dang phone call from Sacramento? What kind of ‘family emergency’ breaks your phone? Is he on the moon?”

No one knows anything about anything. Except me. Including me. The two days before he left I spent hiding in the house. I faked being sick while he begged me via Kai to come talk to him; my only contribution to the cause is silence. It is easy for me to say nothing, to know nothing, because truthfully, I don’t. Maybe he never will be back. Maybe he is in jail; maybe he is dead. I know nothing, have no idea where he will be or when, what he is doing, when the wedding is.

The wedding.

I draw butterflies in the margins around my desk calendar. Monarchs.

My driver’s ed handbook lies open on the funeral calendar. Useless. I don’t know the answers to any of these stupid questions; I’ll never pass the test without him. I don’t want to anyway; if he’s so hot on me driving, he should have stayed to make sure I did it.

Through the window Kai waves and lugs the blower to the shed, done for the night. I imagine a stranger with the spinner. The new guy Wade will have to hire when Dario decides to stay in Pátzcuaro to be with his
wife.

Elanor is wrong. I am not Cordelia. I am more Lear than Wade could ever be.

I gather my books and stand to go. An hour early, but I couldn’t care less. My Emily jeans slip down my nonexistent hips and I yank them up. I need a new belt. I need a new stomach that can handle food. I need a new everything.

The sky is darkening. I make my way alone beneath the trees, through the graves. Over the feet, between each space, stepping carefully around people’s heads.

I look straight ahead. Away from Emily’s abandoned grave, no one now to bring her flowers. I try hard not to see the dark Christmas lights, ignore the periphery, walk steadily forward and concentrate only on getting home, which is how I trip and nearly fall over the yapping mop that comes running from nowhere to nip crazily at my feet.

“Off, off!” I scream, shrugging out of my backpack to wield it and defend myself. But it is tiny. A dirty white poodle with brown liver stains around its mouth.

“Rene!” Gramma calls shrilly from the porch. “Knock that off! You remember Leigh!”

Empty Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets fill the kitchen sink. Meredith, Wade, and Grandpa each like different kinds, and so there are all these little containers instead of just the one big one: Extra Crispy, Spicy, what have you. The only thing I am attempting to hold down is plain mashed potatoes, or whatever KFC is trying to pass off as “mashed potatoes.” Lately I am realizing that restaurants, real or fast food, are all just kind of gross.

Dario, even in his quest for experiencing all things American, would never touch this stuff.

Emily’s mother would have fried the chicken at home, in a cast-iron skillet.

Elanor has probably never eaten fast food, not once in her whole life. These buckets of death would make her hurl.

Loneliness sits cold in my lap.

“I mean to tell you,” Grandpa says. “You would not believe how much fell overnight! Four, four and a half feet
overnight
!”

“Oh, Wallace, don’t exaggerate, you fool.
Four feet.
My God!”

This spirited debate is centered around the recent early Pixley snowfall, Gramma’s instant and resulting fear of Donner Party–style cabin-fever death, and their subsequent open-ended stay here in the cemetery. With us.

Kai and I haven’t even been given a chance to whisper-fight about whose bedroom they’ll be taking over.

The phone rings. Wade reaches across Grandpa’s plate for the wall extension.

“Yellow!” Wade hollers before swallowing.

Gramma rolls her eyes.

“Hello?”
He frowns. “She’s in the middle of dinner. You can call back.” Hangs up.

“Did you just hang up on Balin?” Kai whines.

“They asked for Leigh.”

“Who did?” she says.

“The person who just called! Jeez, you guys, keep up!”

I rub my temples. “
Who
asked for me?”

Wade shrugs.

“Was it Elanor?” Kai asks hopefully. I shoot her a look.

“It was a man, and whoever he is, he better not call during dinner again.”

Kai turns to me, eyes wide. Even Meredith looks up. Gramma’s plastic spork hovers over her coleslaw.

“A man?” Kai says.

“A
guy.
I don’t know.”

Kai and Meredith eyeball me.

“So,” Gramma lays in, pushing her plate aside and turning her chair to face Meredith.

Here we go. Meredith’s Awesome Life and Gramma’s Opinion of It: Unsolicited.

She pulls the Last Supper from her crochet bag into her lap and stares Meredith down. “Let me get this straight; you’re just going to let yourself be dragged to live in a
graveyard
—for the rest of your
life
?” Right in front of Wade, who laughs.

Meredith blinks.

Gramma is incredulous. “What the hell is
wrong
with you?”

Meredith swallows an entire glass of water at once and excuses herself to go paint.

Good lord.

Kai’s eyes are round. Nice mothering. I think I’d rather be ignored. Then again—the devil you know, the devil you don’t—who knows.

What
guy
would be calling me? The only guy I know is busy getting killed in Mexico; he would have spoken to Wade.

I rest my head on my arms.

“Leigh, get your hair out of the biscuits,” Wade says. “If you’re so tired, go to bed, jeez!”

So I do.

“Move over, my pillow’s hanging off the edge!” Kai whispers later in the dark. My room, deemed
Too g.d. messy for guests; what’s with all the boxes?
by Wade, now houses me, and Kai, and all of Kai’s stuff. Including her giant body pillow.

“It’s like three people in here,” I moan. “Do you need that thing?”

“I can snuggle next to you instead,” she offers, and hugs my entire body.

“Hot, hot, too hot!” I throw the covers off.

“All right!” She laughs. “Just lie down. I’ll fix it.”

I lie still and she shakes the sheet and the blanket in parachute waves above me, smooths them flat, and drags her stupid pillow back under. “Okay?”

I nod.

“If Rene pees in my room, I’ll kill him.”

“Sorry. I can see if they’ll switch.”

“No,” she says. “It’s all right. I’m sure he won’t. Maybe just poo.”

We breathe in the dark. My eyes will not close.

“You didn’t eat much dinner,” she says.

“Not hungry.”

“Okay.”

An owl hoots.

“Leigh,” she whispers.

“What?”

“Why didn’t you say goodbye to Dario?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Are you tired?”

“Yes. But I can’t sleep.”

“Me neither.” She rolls over. “Were you mad at him?”

“Who?”

“Dario!”

“No.”

“Was he mad at you?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t think so.”

She turns back to me. “Who called at dinner?”

“I don’t know!”

“Why was Dario mad?” she asks.

“I don’t—he wasn’t. I was sick, I didn’t feel like talking, no one was mad, and I don’t know who called.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

I can hear her wheels turning in the dark.

“Did you know his birthday was in April?”

I nod.

“He’s twenty,” she says.

My heart thumps beneath my threadbare T-shirt.

“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

“Years old.”

“
Yes.
I know.”

“Well … do you miss him?”

“Don’t you?”

She lies on her back and reaches absently for a long swath of my hair, twirls it in her fingers.

“Yes,” she says. “I do. A lot.”

Her hand in my hair sends tingles through my scalp and makes me suddenly drowsy.

“Leigh,” she whispers.

“Hmm?”

“Where is he?”

My heart starts back up. I am wide awake, but I keep my eyes screwed shut.

“Who?”

“Where
is
he?”

I lie there for a while, eyes still closed.

“Sacramento,” I whisper. “Right?”

She divides my hair into three sections. Braids it, tucks it beneath my pillow. Turns on her side to face me.

“Tell me the Plum Creek Christmas?”

The wind whistles low around the corner of the house. The pine branches reach and swing against my window. In Mendocino we slept every night beneath open windows, the voice of the waves singing us to sleep.

“Well,” I whisper, “Pa had gone into town for molasses and salt pork. He had no idea a blizzard was coming. …”

She is asleep in less than a minute.