But as it turned out, Mom went without us. She cried when she told me. “I have to go away for a while. I’m so sorry,” she said. “I just can’t be here right now.” As she tried to hug me, I felt frozen in her arms. I wanted to tell her she was breaking the promise. We were all supposed to go together. Of course it was too late for that, but I wondered why she didn’t at least offer to take me with her. She said she’d get her head back on and her heart sewn as best she could and come back soon. She never said when soon is.
Now she’s just a voice on the phone. She called me at Aunt Amy’s a couple of hours ago. “Hi, Laurel. How are you, sweetie?”
“Okay. How are you?” I tried to picture where she is, but all I could see in my mind was a faded postcard—skinny palm trees rising into a pale blue sky.
“I’m okay. I miss you, honey.” She sniffled, and my body tensed up. I thought, Don’t cry don’t cry. I hate it when Mom cries. May knew how to make her stop, but I never did.
“Yeah, I miss you, too.”
“How is school? What did you do today?”
“The usual. Went to classes.”
“Are you making new friends?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“That’s good. I’m happy for you.”
And then there was a long silence. I didn’t know what to say to her.
“Mom, I should go. I have homework.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“You too.”
I hung up, and just like that, Mom vanished back into the land of washed-out palm trees.
Judy, I read that you said your first memory was music. Music that fills up a home. And one day, suddenly the music could escape through a window. For the rest of your life, you had to chase it.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Janis Joplin,
I am writing to you for an important reason, which I will get to. When I walked up to our table at lunch yesterday, Hannah was talking to some of the soccer boys who’d made their way over, and Natalie was squeezing the last of her Capri Sun out of its package, not looking interested. I sat on the end of the bench and scanned the crowd for Sky. I finally spotted the back of his head at the edge of a crowd of juniors. He hadn’t noticed me, so I turned back to the table and started contemplating whether or not to break out my kaiser roll in public. Then as Hannah laughed with the boys, I noticed her brush her hand against Natalie’s arm, like it was meant to be an accident, but in slow motion. Natalie sucked in her breath and closed her eyes for a second. Suddenly, she interrupted Hannah’s conversation and said, “Come on, let’s go to the alley.” I got worried that they were going to leave me alone and I would have to go back to sitting by the fence, but Natalie looked at me and said, “Come on!” So I followed them. The alley, everyone knows, is where you go to smoke cigarettes and things if you are either cool or a senior.
It turns out that Natalie met this senior, Tristan, in her art class. He told her that he’d buy her cloves and she could come and meet his girlfriend, Kristen. When you see them, you can tell right away that Tristan and Kristen are so in love. Kristen wears long flowy skirts, and she has long hair down to her butt that looks like it must never come untangled. Her face is soft and exotic-looking. She doesn’t talk loudly. Her voice is a whispery rasp, but musical, too. Tristan also has long hair. But otherwise, they are opposites. Everything about him is pointy and buzzing with energy. Tristan wears ripped clothes with patches sewn on from bands like the Ramones and Guns N’ Roses and the Killers. He’s always talking talking talking, and after everything he says, he says, “Right, babe?” and Kristen nods without moving her eyes.
Tristan was easy to meet, because right away he tossed Natalie her pack of cloves and said, “Hola, chiquitita!” And then he kissed Hannah’s hand and kissed my hand and said, “Who are these miniature beauties you offer up to the alley of smoke?” Before we could answer, he turned to Kristen and said, “Looks like we have found the lost children of the freshman class, right, babe? Are you ready to adopt?” Then he pulled a giant kitchen lighter out of his pants pocket and lit our cloves with a flame that almost reached the top of my head. He saw me looking at his patches, especially the one that said SLASH across his chest in bright red letters. I thought that I should say something, so I asked, “Is Slash a band?”
Tristan laughed. “He’s the lead guitarist of the band. Guns N’ Roses. Definition of rock. We’ve got a ways to go on your education, don’t we?”
My face got hot.
But then Tristan said, “Don’t worry, you’re young. There’s still hope. Ready? First lesson. ‘Being a rock star is the intersection of who you are and who you want to be’—quote courtesy of Slash himself.”
“Is that who you want to be?” I asked.
He looked at me, sort of confused.
So I added, “A rock star?”
Tristan laughed again, only this time a little differently. Like I’d asked him a hard question he didn’t want to answer.
“Well, you look like one,” I offered.
Kristen didn’t seem mad that I’d said that, or that he’d kissed our hands. I think because they are so in love, she doesn’t have anything to get jealous of. She didn’t really even look at us. She just lit another cigarette. I tried to smile in a way that would make it so she’d like me, because I really wanted her to, so badly it kind of hurt behind my eyes. I wanted them both to.
“I’m Laurel,” I offered in a squeaky voice.
Kristen’s face stayed blank, but her eyes focused toward me in a way that made me know she was deep-down nice. She said, “Kristen. ‘I’m one of those regular weird people.’”
Tristan explained, “Quote courtesy of Lady Joplin. She’s obsessed.” So then Kristen started talking about you, and I figured out that Kristen really loves you, pretty much as much as she loves Tristan.
When I got home today, I looked up about Slash, and I also looked up about your life, so that I can start my education, and so that I can be friends with Tristan and Kristen. I read that you grew up next to oil towers in Texas, and that when you were a teenager, everyone in high school was terrible to you. But that made you fearless. And then you became famous. When Kristen and I are better friends, I am going to ask her to play me some of your music. I know that I could find some online, but I sort of hope that the first time I hear it will be with her. Until then, though, I am writing because I wanted to thank you for saying that thing about regular weird people, because I thought about that a lot, and I am one of them, too. With all of us standing there together, Kristen, Tristan, Natalie, Hannah, and me, I realized that there is a reason that we were all there—we are each weird in a different way, but together, that’s actually normal. And even if there’s a lot that I can’t say to them, it feels good to belong somewhere.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Allan Lane,
I am at my aunt Amy’s. It’s her week. I like the weeks with my dad better, because Dad is my dad and he’s part of my used-to-be-normal family. But I still love Aunt Amy, which is why I am writing to you. Since you are Mister Ed the talking horse’s voice, I figured you’d be the closest thing to Mister Ed himself. My aunt Amy loves Mister Ed. Really loves him. She also really loves Jesus.
When we were little, Dad didn’t used to like us to spend time with her, because he thought that she was unstable. But Mom would cry and say, “Jim, they’re all she has.” Since Aunt Amy never had kids of her own, she’s always thought of May and me as her daughters, too, I guess.
Even though she’s only forty now, Aunt Amy’s hair is silver already and long, and she wears flower-print dresses. You can tell that she was pretty when she was young. But she’s not like Mom, who seems just as pretty now. Mom looks soft, like an out-of-focus picture that blurs her hair and her face a little bit into the landscape. Or maybe that’s just how I see her now that she’s gone. Aunt Amy is skinny and bony and you don’t want her to stroke your head or hug you. She holds too tight.
Au
nt Amy had a few boyfriends a long time ago, but they were all bad ones. I probably shouldn’t know about that, except I heard Mom talking about it once when she and Dad were fighting. Aunt Amy hadn’t dated anyone since I’ve known her until last year, when she fell for this guy who was walking across the country for Jesus. She found out about him on the news, and she decided she really admired this man. She sent him letters and care packages to pit stops along his route. And then she decided to fly out to Florida so she could join the end of his pilgrimage. She walked the last one hundred miles with him, and they struck up a romance on the road. I think Aunt Amy imagined she’d finally found her mate. Afterward, she called him a lot and left him messages, where she did impressions of Mister Ed or of the Jamaican bobsledders from the movie Cool Runnings. (That is her next favorite thing after Mister Ed.) At first, he called back a little bit. She’d ask him when she could see him again, but he’d never say exactly when. And soon the calls stopped coming. She’s always checking the answering machine, though she tries to act like she doesn’t care. I think she doesn’t want me to see her being hopeful. (I don’t know if being super into Jesus makes you against things like modern technology, but Aunt Amy still hasn’t figured out cell phones.)
At the beginning of the summer, after Mom had told me she was going to go to California for a while, she decided she needed to call some kind of family meeting. It was there that Aunt Amy asked if I wanted to spend Mom’s weeks with her. Clearly the two of them had planned this. Mom and Dad and Aunt Amy and I were sitting in the house May and I grew up in, on the sofa that had been worn in by years of our bodies. Aunt Amy turned to me and asked, “What do you think, Laurel?” She looked so hopeful about it.
Dad didn’t look so sure, but I knew that if I said no to Aunt Amy, she would start talking about how they let May go too far down a path of sin and how I needed God or something.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Then Aunt Amy pointed out that if I stayed with her, I could go to the high school in her district. I had barely considered the fact that I’d have to go to high school at the end of the summer, but if I did have to go, it seemed like a good idea to go somewhere else. So I agreed.
Now Aunt Amy hardly wants me to do anything. Go out, or see anyone, or talk to boys, or anything. The only thing she really lets me do is go on “study dates,” which is how I get to hang out with Natalie and Hannah when I’m at her house. Tonight Aunt Amy and I went to dinner at Furr’s Cafeteria, like we’ve done ever since May and I were kids. I got what I always get at Furr’s—Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes with no gravy, and red Jell-O. Aunt Amy always makes the two of us pray before dinner, even when it’s only an iceberg lettuce and mayonnaise sandwich and I’m watching TV, and even though my dad and I never pray at our real house. Now the prayer is always for May.
Afterward, Aunt Amy asks if I have been saved or not and if I’ve accepted Jesus into my heart. And I always say yes, because I want to get it over with. And I don’t want her to worry. May used to say no. Then she would ask, “What about a baby? What if a baby was just born, and didn’t have time yet to accept Jesus, and the baby died? Would they still go to hell? Or what about a grown-up person, who wasn’t a bad person, but just didn’t know about Jesus because he never learned? Would they go to hell?” Aunt Amy never really answered. She’d just get sad and say that she wanted us to know Jesus’ love. She’d say see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. She’d try to make it like a game, with us covering our eyes and ears and mouths. May hated that. Now Aunt Amy is scared, I guess, that May never got saved. She wants to make sure that doesn’t happen to me. But she doesn’t know how guilty I am. I can’t ever tell.
We were sitting in the Furr’s dining room in the dark red vinyl booth under the ceiling that is too high even for a high ceiling, and I was on to the red Jell-O, cutting every cube into a quarter. Aunt Amy was asking for more ice for her iced tea. And then she started doing her Mister Ed impression and asking me, “How does Mister Ed go? Show me.” She wanted me to make my hands like horse hoofs on the table and a horse noise with my lips. Like we did when I was a kid. I’ve seen how her face falls when I say no, or how she keeps on insisting. So I swallowed and did the horse lips. Just then I looked across the room and I saw this guy Teddy from my history class with his parents, I guess. He’s one of the popular soccer boys. My face turned hot, and I prayed he hadn’t seen me pretending to clip-clop on the table.
I’m nervous, because I am going to sneak out for the first time tonight. Tristan and Kristen are coming to pick me up at midnight. Tristan nicknamed me Buttercup. They adopted me and Natalie and Hannah, and they are especially nice to me, because I am the quietest and I love to listen to their education. When they asked us what we were going to do this weekend, Natalie and Hannah said they were going to spend the night at Hannah’s outside of town. I told them how I couldn’t go because I am kinda trapped at my aunt’s house. So Kristen and Tristan offered to break me out to hang out with them.
I explained living with Aunt Amy part-time by saying that my mom is on some sort of big retreat-type thing. I know that it’s strange that I haven’t talked to any of them about May, but it’s like I have a chance now to forget the bad stuff. To be someone else, someone like her. If I’d gone to Sandia, everyone would be watching me, wanting an answer. But at West Mesa, her identity is my secret. Besides Mrs. Buster, if anyone happened to read the story in the paper all those months ago, or heard of it, they don’t say anything about it. More likely, they didn’t pay attention, or forgot.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Janis Joplin,
I just got home from my first night sneaking out. The window was stuck, but I got it open. Luckily for me, it’s the old push-up kind that’s easy to get in and out of. I can hear Aunt Amy snoring a little, so I’m safe. There were no parties tonight, so we went to Garcia’s Drive-In, which is open all night, and I ordered cherry limeade, and Tristan ordered ten taquitos, and they smoked pot in the car, and Kristen put you on the stereo.
This was the first time that I’d seen people smoke pot, and also the first time I’d heard you sing. Your voice whispered into me, exploding slowly. And Kristen sang along, her eyes closed and the neon lights broken by the window on her cheeks.
I got nervous that she or Tristan would pass me the pipe, and I wasn’t sure what I would do. I was studying them in case I needed to know the right way to use it.
But when Tristan leaned into the backseat, Kristen took it out of his hand and said, “Don’t corrupt her.”
Tristan said, “What? It’s part of her education, right, babe?”
Kristen hit him on the shoulder and said, “Let’s keep it musical.”
Tristan looked at me and shrugged and said, “Sorry, Buttercup. Can’t cross the missus.”
But I think that I might have gotten kind of high from them smoking it in the car, anyway. Because the way you and Kristen sang “Summertime,” it felt like I was so far inside of the song. There was nothing else around. You made me feel what summertime really is. Underneath what’s bright, you knew the hot dark rasp of it. The other thing is, it was like a goodbye, and I could feel that, too. It’s fall now. September’s nearly over.
And then what happened is this. I asked them, trying to sound real casual about it, if they knew Sky. Since I ran into him in the hallway that day, I’ve been hoping for it to happen again, but it hasn’t yet. He did wave to me at lunch the other day, when he caught me looking at him. I thought Kristen and Tristan might know something about him. I tried to sound like I was asking for no reason. But of course my cheeks burned and a giggle burst out of me, and they guessed immediately. Tristan started sing-songing, “Buttercup’s in love!”
Kristen told me that the rumor is Sky transferred because he got kicked out of his old school. She said that he doesn’t talk to anyone about that stuff, so no one knows for sure what happened. She also said that he stands around with the stoners, as if he was one, except he
doesn’t even smoke cigarettes. “But,” she said, “he’s cool, definitely. Capital C. I mean, everyone agrees on that.”
Tristan decided we should drive by his house so I could see it. He looked up Sky’s last name—Sheppard—on Kristen’s phone and found a listing. Kristen said we were being creepy, but Tristan laughed and said it was fun. And secretly, I was really excited to see it. We were out of the high school area, in a neighborhood where the houses are smaller and either adobe or tin-sided. Most of the yards were messy, full of sunflowers whose stems were scrambled together, parts of old cars, or trees that somebody cut at the trunk and never hauled away. But at Sky’s address, everything was perfect. The tin siding on the house looked shinier than the rest, as if someone had polished it. And there were rows and rows of perfect marigolds in the front yard in two long flower beds. A welcome mat and a fall wreath on the door, and two same-sized pumpkins on either side, though they were early for Halloween. I saw there was someone outside. A woman, in her bathrobe, watering the flowers with a bright green watering can. It was two a.m. Just as we were driving away, I saw someone else open the door, and when I turned back, it looked like Sky.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Judy Garland,
I’m in English right now, not paying attention in class and writing this letter instead, which is sort of ironic because technically this whole thing started as an assignment for English that I never turned in.
After I got off the phone with Mom last night, I went on Google Earth and tried to see if I could find where she is. California was colored in blocky splotches of gray and brown and green, like all the other states. I knew the ranch is close to Los Angeles, but I didn’t know where exactly. I scanned around, hovering above the city, trying to find some context. When I would start to zoom in, the picture plummeted toward the ground, until it would land in a street view of a road leading nowhere in particular.
Finally, instead I typed in the address of where you used to live in the desert town of Lancaster, California. It looked like a normal neighborhood, one that I could imagine walking in. My mom told us how before you were Judy Garland, you were Frances Ethel Gumm, “Baby” they called you, from Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Your family moved to Lancaster when you were four. It was dry and dusty, but after the winter rains, miles of red poppies would spring up everywhere. I found a photo of the Lancaster poppies online, and it made me think of you falling to sleep in the field of them in The Wizard of Oz after the Wicked Witch cast a spell. Mom didn’t ever tell us this part, but I read that your family moved because of rumors that your dad hit on male ushers at this theater in Grand Rapids. Your parents used to fight so much it scared you, but you kept singing. Your mom put all of her energy into trying to make you a star. You traveled on the vaudeville circuit with your two older sisters—first the Gumm Sisters, then the Garland Sisters, and then it was you who got signed by MGM.