Chapter 4

Leilora rubbed the paper between her forefingers and her thumbs, unsure of the meaning behind the letter. She thought about searching for the return address, finding a phone number and calling her great aunt. But in her letter, Aunt Mary had specifically stated not to worry about her. It had been so long since she had twirled in that old attic—wearing a foreign wedding dress. She had no other attachment to the old lady, save this letter, which both intrigued and repulsed her.

She would have to travel back, the wonderful nine-hour drive to find her great aunt’s house—she didn’t have the time, nor the money to make such a trip. The journey to Salt Lake City was always a long one, whether she was alone or had company, and she inevitably wound up on I-15 during rush hour. No, she could not act on this letter now, Leilora assured herself and set the letter on the tablecloth.

The window suddenly painted the world a shade darker as the clouds once again overran the sun and Leilora thought she saw another snowflake dash past the window. She waited, stared, holding her breath; but nothing else changed. She finally gave up and stood from the table. She could read a chapter or two of Jane Austen, make herself dinner, find a good movie she hadn’t seen in ages and get to bed early.

The pages of the book brought a comfort to her fingers. It was a familiar touch, a homely smell that reminded her of evenings curled up with Liz and her father—she holding one half of the book, Liz clutching the other, and her father reading to them. Leilora released a smile. They had been more than old enough to read the books alone, but something of tradition lingered. Instead of listening to Dr. Seuss’ rhymes or hearing the Cinderella story (or of Rindercella, for that matter), they were mesmerized by the cadences of William Butler Yeats’ poetry, astonished by the stories of Kate Chopin and William Faulkner; they took turn reading characters in Shakespeare and Johnson’s plays.

How she loved her father for his care in exposing them to great literature! She cherished those evenings above all, each with a cup of hot chocolate—a woolen blanket spread across them—how it itched at the beginning until she was lost in the story, pulling it over her shoulders, up to her chin, when listening to Jack London’s tales from the frozen north.

The questions with which she and her sister had plagued her father must have simultaneously pleased and irritated him. “Will you ever choose which daughter you like better like King Lear did?” she remembered Liz asking and waiting anxiously on her father’s reply. He had denied that he would ever, in fact, choose between us, for, he pointed out, it was death to do so. Leilora missed the harmony of their laughter together—forever gone, ravaged by the hand of time. Why had it to have been that bright morning at Aunty Mary’s when she found out?

*

“Wake up, Leil,” a voice called, halfway between dream and reality. Leilora was not quite sure which side it came from. But she blinked herself awake and found Aunty Mary’s eyes—without a hint of weariness to them—commanding her to rise.

“Mmmf,” Leilora yawned and rubbed her forehead with both palms. “What time is it?” she asked.

“Come with me,” Aunty Mary demanded and strode out the door. Leilora flopped the unfamiliar and still-stiff sheets back and followed the lady in the bright crimson outfit. She walked on her heels, attempting to avoid the chill of the floorboards on the sensitive middle-part of her feet. The hallway, for that very reason, turned out to be much longer than she remembered. When she did make it to rugs and carpets, she found her great aunt waiting, her left hand planted on her hip, a phone receiver in her other hand. Her eyes gave away nothing, layered, concealed, walled shut. The wrinkled hand offered the phone, and Leilora took it carefully, with two hands, as if taking a carton of eggs.

“Hello?”

“Yes, are you the daughter of James McKinney?” the masculine voice on the other line questioned.

“Yeah. Why? Who are you?” she wondered.

“I’m Dr. Strebal with Mercy Medical Hospital; your father has been in an accident and thought you should visit him here.” Leilora’s lungs solidified and refused to breathe. “He’s in critical condition, so I thought you might want to come to the hospital as soon as possible. Do you have any means of transportation?” he asked.

“I…uhm…yeah; I mean, I…I think so…” she attempted to reply and looked at her great aunt who nodded once. Her lips quivered; she was unsure of her voice. Something within her had collapsed; she felt herself sinking, shriveling into a small creature, frightened and shaking.

“Good. I’ll let you know exactly what happened when you arrive. Safe travels. Goodbye,” Dr. Strebal finished and hung up. Leilora lowered the phone from her ear, but could not release it—her fingers clenched the plastic as if it were a life-saving piece of the mast floating in a storm-whipped ocean. She felt the water pressing her chest, rising above her chin. She kicked and struggled to stay above the surface of despair, but felt herself doomed to drown.

When she finally first took a breath, it was the heaving, stuttered intake before the rush of tears. She sealed her lips, as if unwilling to release the flood of emotions within her. Aunty Mary stared at her with distant but sympathetic eyes.

“Come Leil, let’s get you to the hospital.”

*

Leilora dropped her book onto the coffee table, rose, and took two steps towards the kitchen. She didn’t know what she wanted—another cup of tea, another cookie, a cold glass of milk? The sun lingered in the afternoon sky; it looked like she felt: obscured by a thin, formless cloud of nostalgia. If only she could reach out and pull the webs off the sun, then perhaps she’d feel warmer.

Indeed, the light wasn’t helping keep her mind off of death. The sorrow of the clouds bathed the tile in a pale, lifeless grey. The fabric of the couch was painted in pathetic blues and long, sly shadows fell across the walls. Even the light from the lamp on the end table seemed dampened by the day. Leilora sighed and tapped her big toe on the tile behind her.

She walked to the refrigerator, opened the door, and closed it again. What was it she needed? She felt anxious somehow, as if waiting for people to show up to her party. She glanced back at the book; it lay defeated, unliving on the couch. A fly was hovering above it, as if it could smell rottenness in the air. Why didn’t she have any desires now? They were like the snowflakes that landed on the road, Leilora thought—they moment they touched down, they melted into oblivion.

The pantry seemed as bare as the scrub oak outside; nothing looked appetizing, but she decided a cup of hot chocolate would do and retrieved the can of Swiss Miss. The motions came automatically, and Leilora felt her mind drift back to the letter. What if she called? Perhaps she could find a number in one of her mother’s old boxes—in a daytimer or something. Or at least the name of the place. What if she googled the return address of the letter? That would be easiest, she decided. But as she found herself turning to head to her computer, Leilora grabbed onto a cabinet handle. Hold on a minute, girl, she told herself, you promised that you wouldn’t pursue this letter. Leave it be.

The kettle began to squeal again and called Leilora from her musings. She poured the boiling water over the powdered chocolate. She stirred it uneasily with a metal spoon. A thin coating of foam swirled above the deep brown of the chocolate. When she pulled the spoon out, Leilora fancied she could make out different images. First, the world, with its cream-colored continents and chocolate oceans—she blew on it just enough to keep it spinning, dabbing it just enough to create pockets in the foam. She split islands and dug out seas in her little world bounded by ceramics.

She kept stirring and blowing, imaging it a Jacuzzi or a smiley face—but with a weird, untrimmed mustache. The surface of the liquid, though the foam rapidly lost substance, was her canvas for the moment, and she was glad to be the painter. Had the drink cooled enough to taste—she picked up her spoon and ladled a bit from the mug. She puffed a few gusts of wind across a summer duckpond, rippling the surface—she had always hated that when watching water, when the wind would suddenly pick up and ruin a mirror-surfaced lake. That was one of her favorite things to do with Liz: they would go early in the morning (to avoid the winds) and sit at the edge of the lake by their house. The mist would drift above the lake—like steam rising from her mother’s coffee that she always left on the countertop unfinished—and they would relax there, sometimes chatting, sometimes silently observing.

Leilora cupped her hands around the mug—sipped at the surface, probing the temperature. The mild sting of the liquid on her lips suggested another minute of cooling. She resumed her blowing. A genii swirling from a lamp; long, rounded hands folded in prayer; a woman’s body folded around a sleeping child. All very like one of Van Gogh’s paintings. Then she saw a strange thing happen: once most of the foam had dissipated, the rest of the creamy islands drifted on their own accord to the rim of the mug. And she wondered why.

But then the fly found her cup and made a buzzing fuss around it until she managed to wave it away to a window, where it slipped in between the blinds—to be caught, to wait for death on a glass pane. Leilora scoffed at the insect and shut the blinds—sealing its fate. And, secretly, she was happy to have rid the world of one more pest.

And while she sipped her now perfectly warm beverage, her eyes inevitably found the other pest in the room—the letter. It seemed to watch her, lurking halfway inside the envelope, waiting to creep out and take her by surprise. Like a patiently stalking cat creeping, inching towards its prey, the letter stared at her. Why couldn’t she shake it from her mind? Leilora wondered. Perhaps her own curiosity amplified the mysterious nature of the message.

She wandered back to the table and pulled the note out again. Surely Aunty Mary wasn’t dead yet. She could call, couldn’t she? Find out what was wrong with her, see if she was on any funny medications? There had to be an explanation for the letter. But when had there ever been an explanation for Aunty Mary? The only time she had met the old lady was the day before her father and sister had died. What kind of terrible coincidence was that? Leilora had often wondered if it weren’t Aunty Mary’s very presence that frightened her father’s last breaths from his dying body in the ICU room. That moment had engrained itself within her.

*

Leilora meandered through the opened door to ICU 122 and listened to the steady beeping rhythm of heartbeats. The nurse had resumed her hurried walk to attend some other patient, to inform some other sobbing relative of tragedy. Small mechanical whirrs filled the room; the sterile odor of oxygen and plastics smelled of death. Her father lay on the bed, wires and tubes tangled around him—like the silk of a giant robotic spider.

“Daddy?” she whispered at the foot of his bed. How she wanted for him to see her, to tell her she’d be okay, he’d be okay, and that they would go home soon and bake more cookies—like Snickerdoodles. She moved to his side and snatched his hand. “Daddy?” she called, a little louder this time. He made no response, but she continued anyway, brushing the hair on the back of his hand. “I heard what happened; I’m sorry I wasn’t there with you. Maybe this wouldn’t have happened. I…I wanted to stay with you and Liz.” Leilora studied the broken but peaceful body of her father with blurry eyes. She sniffed once and kept talking.

“Mom won’t be happy, you know. But I still love you Daddy. So don’t go…not now. Oh, Daddy, I shouldn’t have stayed with her; I should have asked to stay with you,” she finished. The silent pause that echoed after her words reminded Leilora only of her father’s critical condition.

“That’s ridiculous, Leil. You have been spared because you stayed with me.” Leilora felt Aunty Mary’s shadow fall across her shoulders and over her father’s bed. “If you had gone with your father, you would be dead already, just like your sister,” Aunty Mary attempted to soothe.

“Wait, Liz? Nobody said anything about her…” Leilora heaved, confusion reigning in her battered eyes.

“Yes, Leil, she was pronounced dead at the scene; we decided you needed to focus on your father while he was still alive.”

“But Liz. No.” Leilora’s breaths came quickly and heavily. “I…oh God, Liz. Daddy why?” Her fist tightened around his non-responsive hand. Then the beeps began to falter from their rhythm. “Oh no…no, Daddy? Daddy!” Bodies came from the hallway; a nurse pulled her from the bedside. Words, commands were issued; she heard nothing but the beeps, she looked for nothing but her father’s face. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks. Someone had hold of her arms from behind—she couldn’t get loose. The beeps slowed, echoing with every fear inside her.

When the gaps in the pulse stopped, when the prolonged note began to issue from the monitor, Leilora fell to her knees. Everything blurred and spun and fell around her. She saw a single object in the room—she focused all of her attention on it, clinging to this one part of reality where all else seemed to fade to nothing: a small, red light, glowing steadily beyond all motion of change. It gleamed in the blur of events, appearing cross-like in her tears. She watched for minutes, hours, centuries; grappled herself to that red star—let it carry the weight of her soul for as long as she knelt.