Before and Afterlives

  I’d forgotten the favor I’d promised: not to come back while they were working. Tommy hadn’t really lied when he told me moving here was for Tristan’s benefit, to get away from his family and the people who wanted him to be something other than what he is. I wondered how long he’d been trying to hide this part of himself before he met Tommy, who was able to love him because of who and what he is. What a gift and curse that is, to be both of them, to be what Tristan is and for Tommy to see him so clearly. My problems were starting to shrivel the longer I looked at them. And the longer I looked, the more I realized the dangers they faced, how easily their lives and love could be shattered by the people in the world who would fire them from life the way the school board fired Mr. Turney for actually teaching us what we can know about the world.

  I turned and quietly went back through the woods, but as I left the trail and came into the back field, I began running. I ran from the field and past the house, out into the dusty back road we live on, and stood there looking up and down the road at the horizon, where the borders of this town waited for me to cross them at the end of summer. Whether there were dragons waiting for me after I journeyed off the map of my first seventeen years didn’t matter. I’d love them when it called for loving them, and I’d fight the ones that needed fighting. That was my gift, like Mom had told me, what I could do with my will. Maybe instead of psychology I’d study law, learn how to defend it, how to make it better, so that someday Tommy and Tristan could have what everyone else has.

  It’s a free country after all. Well, sort of. And one day, if I had anything to say about it, that would no longer be a joke between Tommy and me.

  Dead Letters

  Dear Sarah,

  I have heard of your great misfortune to have gone and died so suddenly. Now I find myself writing after so many years have passed between us in the hopes that perhaps this news is not true. For a long time I believed I was dead too. Then one day someone called my name (“Alice. Do you remember her? Alice Likely. How she loved that girl.”) and I opened my eyes in a dark place, like a fairy tale princess trapped in a coffin. Light appeared suddenly, a flash so sharp and blinding, it pricked my eyes and made them water. Anyone passing by might have thought I was crying. I must have looked so sad.

  And someone did stop beside me. I was still trapped in that dark place, my body bagged in a sack of unbeing, but the flash of light had ripped a hole in the darkness. Through that opening, two hands reached in and gripped both sides of the fissure. The hands pulled the gap wider and wider until daylight surrounded me, and trees sprang up, row after row of them. Birds called out. Their notes pierced my eardrums like needles. I heard water, and then there it was too—a stone fountain next to the bench I lay upon, and the birds perched upon the fountain’s ledge staring at me, their eyes black and serious.

  Whoever freed me disappeared before I could pull myself together. A newspaper lay open across my chest, and another on my legs. I sat up and the paper on my legs slid to the ground, rattling. I held on to the section covering my chest and looked at it for a moment, only to see your name glaring up at me, as if your name had a life of its own, had your eyes and the looks you could give with them, and so your name glared at me in such a way that I could not help but notice it. It said you were dead. Twenty-eight years old. A promising local artist. Survived by her mother and father. Their names were listed as well, but it hurt to look at them. Particularly your mother’s. She never liked me and I still don’t know why. What did I ever do to her?

  I am writing in the hopes that there may still be a chance for us to reconcile, to come together, to answer some of the questions that have burned inside me since you said goodbye. Why did you betray me? Whatever happened to our promise? And where have I been for so long, asleep and waiting for someone to wake me? Why didn’t you do that? I don’t even recognize my own body. My legs are long and my feet are large. When I peered into the fountain water, a face looked back that belonged to a stranger. Then the fountain turned on again, displacing the water, and the face broke apart into ripples.

  Now I am writing this to you. Will you please talk to me? Can we forgive one another?

  Love,

  Alice

  I am writing in a notebook stolen from Rexall’s drugstore, the sort of book Sarah and I used in school years ago, for doodling and note-taking. The cover of it looks like the black and white static on a dead television channel. “Snow,” Sarah’s father used to call that. “Nothing but snow here,” he’d say, flipping the channel until something lively and entertaining appeared. He favored shows about policemen and vigilantes who saved the lives of people who could not save themselves from danger. He instructed the vigilantes and policemen on how to go about all of this saving-of-lives business, spouting advice from his reclining chair, waving the remote control like a scepter. Sometimes the vigilantes listened to him, sometimes they didn’t. But they always saved the helpless victims in the end.

  The pharmacist and his wife didn’t recognize me. But I didn’t recognize them at first either. They are old and gray now. Mrs. Hopkinsey’s face sags. Her teeth are not her teeth any longer. I know this because I remember they were yellow and crooked and now they are white and bright and not so narrow; they line up in her mouth like good soldiers. She smiled at me. “Can I help you, dear?”

  Such a nice woman, just as I remember. I told her I was browsing, and she nodded and turned back to shuffling cigarette packs into the storage bin over the checkout counter.

  I walked the aisles slowly, touching candy bars, tubes of lipstick, barrettes in the shape of butterflies. I spun the comic book rack and paged through magazines, but the women inside were strange and alien, their faces harsh, skin like plastic or velvet. Too smooth. Their outlines blurred into the backgrounds. I found that a familiar feeling, though, and felt a stab of pity for the cover girl’s blurry faces.

  The greeting cards stood on the same shelves that they always had; I picked through them. One said, “I feel so lonely with you not here.” On the cover was a picture of a little girl looking up at the moon, holding a doll at her side. Inside it read, “But we’ll always be friends, no matter what the distance.” I found myself crying, and stuffed the card under the waistband of my pants, covering it up with my sweater. I looked to see if anyone had seen me take it, but Mrs. Hopkinsey still restocked cigarettes and Mr. Hopkinsey stood behind the medicine counter, measuring out pills for a customer.

  If Sarah had been there, she would have been the one to take the card. I would have been the lookout. Those had been our positions when we were children. I felt a little guilty changing places with her, like borrowing a friend’s sweater and not returning it, even though you know how they love it so.

  I found the notebook in the next aisle over. I hadn’t known I was going to take it either. I needed things without knowing what I needed, so I let my hands think for me. They reached out and took things: the greeting card, several envelopes, the notebook, pens, a bar of chocolate, a ten dollar bill crumpled up on the black and white checkered floor. I used the money to buy a soda and a bag of potato chips, so as not to be suspicious. Mrs. Hopkinsey rang me up with her new smile still flashing, and when she handed me my change, I thought,I am home.

  Dear Sarah,

  I refuse to believe you are dead. I myself am not dead, so it goes to figure that you are alive and well. The obituary I read must have been mistaken. Or else another Sarah Hartford exists and it is this other Sarah Hartford who has died. Not you.

  I have seen the Hopkinsey’s, those dear old people, and they have changed enormously. Do you remember how we’d steal candy and perfume samplers from them when we were girls? We were ridiculous, weren’t we? And the Hopkinsey’s are such good people, I feel ashamed to have stolen from them. Why didn’t we ever shoplift at the Hoffman’s grocery store instead? The Hoffman’s were snobs. Missy Hoffman always thinking she was better than everyone because her DADDY owned the only grocery store in Kinsman, so she had “the whole town?
??s money”. How I wanted to punch that girl. Luckily I had you to restrain me, to whisper, “Calm down, Alice, just ignore her. She’ll get hers some day.” You were the one with your head about you, calm and collected, shoelaces tied, hair in place. No one could ruffle you. Not even Missy.

  But what happened to change you? In the newspaper I read that you were murdered by your boyfriend. Tom or Don or Ron. Someone with a name like a mantra. Is this a true description? Did his name repeat in your head, again and again, like Chinese water torture?Don, Don, Don. Tom, Tom, Tom. Ron, Ron, Ron. What an awful rhythm to be ruled by.

  You were obsessed with Ron, I’m guessing, because you were always obsessive, with your paintings and sketches, with your neatness, the constant smoothing-over of your clothes with the flats of your hands, erasing imaginary wrinkles. The way the part in your hair had to be perfect. The way you avoided cracks in sidewalks because of that nursery rhyme about mothers. I figure you became obsessed with this man in a similar manner.

  Don abused you, the papers reported. In the past you had called the police on him. The two of you were noted for dramatic gestures. Did I read this correctly? You burned Tom on the neck with a curling iron? Or was it Tom that burned you? You hit him over the head with a Mason jar that you filled with brushes? Or did Don do that to you? Someone had to have fifteen stitches. Someone called 911 to report an intruder. By the time the police arrived, though, said intruder had vanished into thin air. In the end you and Tom reconciled. You smoothed out the wrinkles. Then he killed you six months later and smashed up all of your paintings. All the frames broken, the canvases torn with a hunting knife. Such a violent imagination. It is evidence like this that proves to me that the dead Sarah Hartford in the newspaper is not the same Sarah Hartford I once knew. She must be your double.

  I am glad to know you continued painting. You had vision, I remember, even as a child. But even so, with all that vision, how could you have not seen this coming? To me it sounds as though you stood in the middle of a railroad crossing, not moving when the yellow eye of the train appeared in the night, nor when it whistled a warning. I don’t mean to say you allowed Tom or Ron or Don to kill you. I mean to say, how could you allow yourself to be with such a person after the first time it happened?

  If I’d been around, I would have been the one with my head about me, with my shoelaces tied and my hair in place. I would have led you by your ear out of Ron’s reach, even if you struggled against me. This is a testament of my loyalty to our friendship. This is the reason why we need one another. For times like this, when we’re not reasoning correctly.

  Love,

  Alice

  P.S. You are NOT dead.

  “Promise,” Sarah told me. “Promise, Alice.” And so I did.

  “We’ll always be best friends, and here is proof of it.” I touched my fingertip to Sarah’s. They were both bloody from pricking the skin with a needle a minute earlier. We rubbed our blood together until it mingled and Sarah sighed, satisfied that the act was completed.

  “Now no one will ever separate us,” she said. “It’s final.”

  A thrill sped up the length of my spine when Sarah said that. She was the only friend I can remember having. When we pledged our undying love for one another, I believed it in every part of my being. “I’m so happy you’re my friend, Alice Likely,” she said, smiling. I beamed.

  But her mother came in a moment later. “What are you doing now?” she complained. Her voice sounded like knitting needles, clicking over and over. I didn’t say anything. Sarah had warned me not to speak back to her mother. I was to keep my mouth closed, or else we’d never be allowed to see one another.

  “I was just playing, Mom,” Sarah answered.

  “In the middle of your room? What’s that, then? Give me your hand. You’re bleeding, Sarah! How did you manage that?”

  Sarah’s mother led her into the bathroom to clean up her finger, all the while chastising. “What’s wrong with you, Sarah? What am I going to do with you? You must go out. You must make friends. You’re going to be thirteen next month. A big girl!”

  “I do have friends,” Sarah protested.

  “Other friends,” Mrs. Hartford muttered. “You mustn’t hide yourself away only for the benefit of your dear Alice.”

  “I’m not hiding, Mother.” Sarah’s voice, harsher now, rising.

  “Well, you certainly aren’t making yourself much of a presence. Now help me hang the laundry. Make yourself useful.”

  Useful. One of Mrs. Hartford’s favorite words. “What does it do?” she was always asking. “What use is it?” When the neighbor boy, Jimmy, started college as a Philosophy major, Sarah’s mother asked, “And what will you do with that?”

  Jimmy had stared at her for a moment, then shrugged and changed the subject to the weather. What a storm that was the other night, he told her. “Yes, a whopper,” Sarah’s mother agreed, without pressing him any further about the Philosophy major. “I expect it will help the corn, though,” she said.

  The weather. An awful part of my current circumstances. Though it is summer, it rained last night, and I was forced to seek shelter. My park bench provided no protection from the raindrops, warm as they were and welcome, as I’ve started to stink without a proper place to bathe. I finally stumbled into one of the baseball field dugouts, the home team side, and fell asleep on the cold concrete bench in there, with the sound of the rain pattering above me, and the smell of dirt from the baseball diamond turning into a thick, rich mud.

  I dreamed of Sarah. She stepped down into the baseball dugout, kneeled beside me, and placed her cheek upon my stomach. I stroked her hair. How soft it was beneath my fingers. I almost believed I was awake and Sarah had finally come to me. When the sun broke through the night, though, and morning woke me, I felt a wave of sadness. I shivered, rubbing tears out of my eyes, for I had lost her again. Like the fog that hangs over the fields of the park, she had dissipated.

  Dear Sarah,

  I am very angry. Why will you not speak to me? Do you believe yourself above me for some reason? I’m not certain if you even read my letters. What should I do? Stop writing you? I will stop writing if only you would say so. Why don’t you say so?

  When I stroll through Kinsman, I often stop stock still in my tracks for strange reasons. Here I see you everywhere. In the school yard, the grocery store, or at the Rexall’s. Leaning over a water fountain, pulling your hair from your face. Running through town square, to the park, where you left me that horrible day, so long ago. Yes, I remember. Did you think I would forget the pain you caused me, or how it was inflicted? I was attempting to be the bigger person, but now I see you have changed indeed, and I no longer know you. The Sarah Hartford who was my best friend would never have answered my letters with silence.

  I suppose your mother finally got to you. When I say your mother, I mean this town. When I say this town, I mean this town with its one miserable Main Street and its overabundance of churches. No more than three thousand people live here and yet there are fifteen churches that come to mind readily. What I mean to say is this town has you believing in its one screen drive-in movie theater, its Dairy Oasis, its Wildwood Café with the admittedly fantastic coffee, its park that consists of a water fountain, trees, a baseball diamond, and cemeteries. Granted, the cemeteries are well-groomed, and in autumn the trees light up with brilliant colors. But this town is not where you imagined yourself forever.

  What happened to New York City? What happened to San Francisco? What about Europe? You said you’d die if you never made it to Paris. Now that I’m back, I discover that the only time you ever left this place was for a year and a half of college in Columbus. You never even left Ohio. Then Tom asked you to move in and you went to him. You went to him blindly, your arms outstretched, eyelids lowering. A sleepwalker.

  That day in the park, it must have been fifteen years ago, you said you had something to tell me. You asked me to sit beside you on the bench near the water fountain. There were bi
rds perched on the ledge of the fountain, dipping into the water for a drink, turning to stare at us, heads cocked at quizzical angles. Robins, I think, though I saw at least one blue jay among them, arguing. You said you loved me, but there was something you had to tell me. You said—

  You said—

  Damn you. Now I am crying. I can’t even finish this letter. My hands are shaking so badly I want to hurt you. To hell with you, Sarah Hartford. Who needs you anyway? You are cruel, mean-spirited. Also thankless.

  Signed,

  Alice Likely (Or have you erased this name from memory?)

  I’ve taken a job and found a bed to sleep in. I sell corn by the roadside. For every bag I sell, I can keep a dollar. I pick the corn every morning, while Mr. and Mrs. Carroll feed their livestock, fill up the water trough, milk the cows who have calves that won’t suck, and attend to the children. They are a busy family, the Carrolls, too busy to check references, although I provided them. I am passing through on my way to California, where friends await me. Or so I have told them. How strange and liberating, this easiness in making up an identity. The Carrolls see me as a free spirit, a gypsy, someone from the 1960’s, “new-agey”, according to Mrs. Carroll, who has a friend who reads tarot cards and burns incense, and knows about these things.

  “How long do you need work?” asked Mrs. Carroll when I came into her yard. She was beating a rug on her porch steps. Dust spun in the air around her like tiny galaxies. She smacked the throw rug, then looked back at me for an answer.

  “A few weeks,” I said. “I just need to make some money and have a place to sleep for a while.”