Nineteen
My phone wakes me.
It’s a ringtone I haven’t heard in a while: “Let’s Get Together” from the old sixties version of The Parent Trap . Klaudie and I programmed the song into each other’s phones back when we first got them in middle school. Or at least, I was in middle school. Klaudie was already a freshman at Calhoun, and she was so pissed that we got our phones at the same time—me a whole year earlier than her.
After Klaudie’s anger wore off, we decided we needed matching ringtones, just for each other, so we’d always know when the other was calling. The Parent Trap was our favorite movie when we were little, so the choice was a no-brainer.
I answer the call just as Hayley Mills is singing “We can have a swingin’ ti-ime.”
“Klaudie,” I heave out groggily. “What?”
The game room is, as before, cast in windowless darkness. It could be later afternoon or past midnight—there’s no way of knowing. All I’m really certain of is the crick in my back.
“Tash? Thank God. I thought I was going to have to call Mom and Dad. Tash, you have to come get me.”
I sit up straight, rubbing at my eyes and kicking my brain into operative mode. Beside me, Jack stirs. Paul is snoring softly; he’s always been a heavy sleeper.
“Come where and get you?” I say in a bad attempt at a whisper.
“Um. Um. ” Klaudie’s crying, I realize. “It’s . . . the Dairy Queen near the mall. The Lansdowne shopping center? By the post office.”
“Okay. Okay, I can be there in, like, twenty minutes.”
Klaudie sniffs. “Can’t you come sooner?”
“No, because I’m at the Harlows’, and I have to walk back home to get the car, and that Dairy Queen is fifteen minutes away from our house, anyway. So just calm down, I’m coming as fast as I can.”
I now have a very strong suspicion that Klaudie is drunk, in which case telling her to calm down probably won’t help, but I don’t know what else to say. I’ve never dealt with a drunk person. I never imagined I would have to deal with a drunk Klaudie , of all people.
When I hang up, Jack is quick to speak.
“Was she in an accident? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, she just said she needs me to pick her up.”
“Want me to come with?”
Something about Jack’s offer, so immediate, like a reflex, draws tears from my eyes. Yes, I do want her to come. I want someone else with me as I deal with this potentially scarring mission. I want someone to sit in the passenger seat and tell me Klaudie is fine and that I’m perfectly justified in being simultaneously worried about and angry with her. But then I think about what Klaudie would want. What would I want if I were Klaudie? Obviously she’s in a desperate place if she’s calling me and not Ally or Jenna. And would I want one of Klaudie’s friends seeing me desperate and crying and probably drunk?
“No,” I say. “It should just be me.”
“I could at least walk you home. It’s pretty late.”
I check my phone. It’s almost two o’clock in the morning.
“Damn,” I say.
Because I realize that not only has Klaudie yet again broken curfew, I technically have too. Sure enough, there’s one missed text from Mom on my phone: Where could Tasha be?
I type back, Sorry!! At Harlows, fell asleep early. Will be back in the morning.
Paul hasn’t stirred. Jack looks at him, then me, shaking her head.
“He’d be the first one dead in a zombie attack.” She doesn’t even try to whisper.
I know she’s trying to cheer me up, so I throw back a halfhearted laugh. When I get to my feet, Jack grabs my wrist. It’s so dark, I can barely make out the edges of her face, but I feel the concern on her.
“Hey,” she says. “It’ll be okay.”
I nod rapidly. Jack can’t see the tears on my face, but I know she can feel them the same way I can her concern.
Paul’s still sound asleep when I leave the room.
• • •
I run down the sidewalk, slow to a brisk walk, then speed to a run again. I don’t have my own car yet, but I borrow Klaudie’s sometimes, and I have a spare key. Halfway home, I have the panicked thought that Klaudie drove herself tonight and that her car’s abandoned in a ditch somewhere. But then my house comes into view, and I see Klaudie’s white Honda Accord parked in front of the house, per usual.
When I open the door, I’m hit with a pungent wave of perfume. I don’t know the physics behind it, but Klaudie has mastered the art of making her car smell like a Juicy Couture store. I gag, and then breathe through my mouth as I turn on the engine and crank the AC to full blast. It’s a hot, sticky night, and the cold air helps thin out the sugary fumes. The radio turns on, blaring a dubstep remix. The beat has just dropped, and the whole car thrums with the bass line before I can turn down the volume.
I don’t cut off the song entirely. I need something to distract me from my anxious thoughts. The streets are deserted, and I hit three green lights in a row. When I gave Klaudie my ETA , I wasn’t taking into account the fact that there’d be no traffic. I’m only going a little over the speed limit, but I can already tell I’ll make it to her in half the usual time. Good.
I pull into the empty parking lot of the Dairy Queen, and for a moment I freak out, because all the lights are off, and there’s no sign of Klaudie. No Klaudie by the door, no Klaudie on the patio. It’s only when I get out and round the building that I see her sitting on the curb, just past the drive-thru window.
She turns her head at the sound of my approach, and moonlight illuminates her tearstained face.
“So . . . ,” I begin.
“Don’t say anything,” she says. “Just drive.”
We get in the car, but I don’t turn the key yet. I’m staring at Klaudie in the fuzzy blue darkness, trying to figure out if she’s really drunk, or if she’s high, or if she needs medical attention. Her pupils are pretty dilated, but then, it’s dark, so I guess mine are too. Her movements don’t seem that uncoordinated. But maybe Klaudie’s not that kind of drunk. Maybe she’s the quiet and surprisingly coordinated kind.
“Stop trying to look at my eyes,” Klaudie says, covering her face. “I’m not stoned.”
I reach over the console and fumble around the floorboard of the backseat until I grab hold of what I’m searching for: a water bottle. It’s half-empty and lukewarm, but it’s something. I unscrew the cap and hand it over to Klaudie.
“Drink,” I command.
I expect her to resist, but she doesn’t. She chugs all of it in one go. She releases the bottle from her mouth with a noise that’s half hiccup, half cry. It’s an embarrassing noise that makes me turn on the engine in hopes that the radio will make things less awkward.
I pull out of the parking lot and get back on the street, but I don’t turn where I should to get us home. Maybe Klaudie notices, or maybe she’s too intoxicated to care. Whatever the case, she doesn’t say anything, just props her sneakers on the glove compartment and rests her head on the passenger window. We’re passing through a nice neighborhood of ranch homes from the fifties. I like driving this route. On this quiet night, driving down these uniform, symmetrical streets, I can almost imagine I live in a world where there’s no war or embezzling or ignorant Facebook posts. No online haters, no silverspunnnx23. No Internet whatsoever.
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Klaudie says.
Which is totally uncalled for, because I’m not trying to extract information from her, even on the sly. I was perfectly content to drive in silence. But now I feel like I have to defend myself, so I say, “I didn’t have to pick you up.”
Klaudie starts crying again. Loudly. I slow to a stop at a red light, even though we’re the only car at the intersection. I wonder, would I really be breaking the law if I ran it? If a tree falls in an empty forest, does anyone hear it? The light changes before I can contemplate these and deeper mysteries of the universe. I drive on. Klaudie keeps crying.
She finally says, “I had a fight with J-Jenna and Ally. I told Jenna she was t-t-too drunk to drive, and she wouldn’t listen, and so I made her pull over and drop me off. O-only I didn’t think she was going to actually do it. I thought she’d pull over and we’d just wait it out. But she didn’t, she’s such a bitch . They b-both are.”
I use the ensuing silence to debate whether Klaudie will remember any of this in the morning, and if it’s even worth engaging in this conversation. Klaudie reads my mind.
“I’m not that drunk,” she says, rolling down her window.
“Ugh, Klaudie, stop. It’s so humid out there.”
She hangs her head out the window. I wonder if she’s going to puke, but after a half minute, she pulls herself back in and rolls the window up.
I feel bad about my last comment, so I say, “You did the right thing, at least. Friends don’t let friends drive drunk, or whatever.”
Klaudie coughs out a hard, brief laugh. “Yeah, that’s me. Being good even when I’m bad.”
I laugh too, because Klaudie has voiced exactly what I’ve been thinking: Even when she’s trying to go delinquent, it seems she can’t help but sabotage herself with responsibility.
We’re silent for a second, and then she says, “Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Psychoanalyzing me.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You’re thinking.”
“God, excuse me for thinking.”
“You don’t know what’s going on with me.”
“Okay, fine .”
“I’m not trying to, like, see what it’s like to be bad for once. That’s not what this is.”
“Okay.”
Silence.
“You’re still doing it.”
I slam on the brakes. We’re at another intersection, and our light is green, but I shift the car into park. It doesn’t matter. No one’s here but us.
“Get over yourself,” I say, my voice quick and tight. “I’m allowed to analyze you in my head. God knows it’s what we’ve all been trying to do this whole summer.”
“What are you talking about?”
“C’mon, Klaudie. Skipping dinners and treating Mom and Dad like shit—”
“I haven’t—”
“Yeah, you have . Look, I get it’s your last summer. I get you’re trying to carpe diem or whatever the hell. But you screwed over all of us in the process.”
“Oh my God, see? See, that’s it . That’s why I can’t do this anymore. Anything out of line with you guys makes me a freakin’ disappointment .”
“I didn’t say I was—”
“Forget it. You’re missing the point.”
“So tell me the point.”
Klaudie shakes her head. “You don’t know what it’s like. You get a free pass. You get to mess around with your movies. I’m the oldest, so I have to keep my shit together.”
I’m silent for a second, processing. “But . . . you like keeping your shit together.”
“Okay, yeah, most of the time. But sometimes I can’t. Sometimes it’s not enough. And Mom and Dad—”
“What? They never say—”
“They don’t have to!” Klaudie shouts over me. “They don’t have to say it in so many words. It’s just the way it is .”
Klaudie drops her forehead onto her bent knees. Above us, the traffic lights go through another cycle: green, yellow, red. I want to be angry at Klaudie, but I’m not. I guess I’m too stunned.
She turns in her seat and says, “You know what Dad did, when I told him I wanted to study engineering? He cried , Tash. He freakin’ cried. And he said Gramps would be so proud of me, and I was going to carry on the Zelenka legacy.”
“What’s . . . wrong with that?”
“It’s the pressure !” Klaudie shrieks. “Who wants that kind of pressure?”
“He didn’t mean—”
“No, of course he didn’t. But it’s there. It’s there . And it’s going to be there, even when I’m away at Vanderbilt. The Zelenka name is on my shoulders. That’s what will be in the back of my mind every time I take a test or give a presentation. Like, did Gramps and Nana come all the way from behind the Iron Curtain just for me to fuck up a thermodynamics final.”
“Klaudie, that’s messed up. No one wants you to think like that.”
“But—”
“No,” I cut in. “No, you know what? Sometimes you don’t realize how lucky you are. You’re complaining about going to this great, expensive school that I can’t even get into.”
I don’t know what I want Klaudie to do—if I want her to lash out or fight back. She does neither. In a whisper, she says, “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that to you.”
But I don’t need that apology. It’s taken me weeks to get a grip on Vanderbilt, but I think I finally have. I shrug, surprised by my composure. “I read this article that followed graduates from public schools and prestigious private universities, and twenty years down the road they end up with the same jobs and salaries. So it doesn’t really matter where I go.”
“I thought you were trying to make me feel better.” Klaudie sniffs, and somehow it turns into a little laugh.
For the first time since she got in the car, the silence that falls between us isn’t tense. It’s just silence. I think about shifting gears and driving on, but I’m scared that will break this quiet, strangely comfortable moment.
“Do you ever . . . ,” Klaudie begins. She shakes her head and rubs her wrist beneath her nose. “Do you wonder if Mom and Dad would be different if their families were around?”
“What?”
“Gramps and Nana were all Dad had. And Mom’s, like, thousands of miles away from her family. I know at first I was saying Mom was having this kid because she thought we weren’t good enough. I knew that was stupid, but . . . it kind of felt like it. But now I’ve been thinking, maybe this kid is just them trying to expand the family. Give themselves what they don’t have enough of, you know?”
“Well,” I say, “it was an accident, so I don’t think there really is a reason.”
Klaudie tips her head toward me. “No. Maybe not.”
It’s in the air. I know: We’ve reached an open place. A moment where we can peel back our skin and expose all the poorly threaded veins and bad blood beneath. It’s a place only Klaudie and I can go, because we’re sisters, and we know each other this well.
So at last, I voice my own doubt.
“Do you think they’re being stupid to have the baby?”
“I don’t know.” Klaudie’s tracing an unknowable pattern on the window with her pinkie finger. “But I don’t blame them.”
Somehow, this makes sense to me. Even though Klaudie clearly does blame my parents—and I do too—we don’t blame them in that way . Not in a moral way. Morally, I think we understand. The way we blame our parents is personal. A daughter-to-mother, daughter-to-father way. We might feel it to different degrees, but the question is the same: Why change everything forever, when everything was just fine?
The intersection blinks through yet another cycle, turning our light green. I shift the car into drive. I’m driving with purpose now, though still not toward home. Klaudie doesn’t ask questions. If she doesn’t know what I’m doing at first, she does when I pull into the lot of a twenty-four-hour Kroger and say, “Let’s buy flowers.”
We buy a bouquet of sunflowers and a bouquet labeled “Summer Celebration”—a collection of daisies, orange roses, and button mums. In the self-checkout lane, we both grab a bottled Coke from the display fridge. Then we load back into the car, and I drive us to Evergreen Memorial Gardens. The cemetery is older, on the outskirts of town, backing up to horse farm territory. The gates are shut, but the wrought iron fence is low and relatively easy to climb. I go first, and Klaudie hands the flowers and sodas through the bars before following me. I use my phone flashlight to guide us.
I’ve never found graveyards scary in the way most people do. I don’t believe in ghosts or hauntings, just life after life. But it’s more than that, I think. I was young when my grandparents died, and I got so accustomed to visiting their graves that the cemetery was never a spooky unknown to me. It was a routine part of life, the same as my annual checkup at the doctor’s or a visit to the hairdresser. And how could I believe that anything evil was buried here, in the company of Gramps and Nana Zelenka?
We visited here a lot after the accident, all together as a family. We brought bouquets for Nana and drank sodas for Gramps, because his favorite thing to do when we visited their house was sit on the porch drinking Coke. And then, around high school, we stopped coming so often, until we only made an annual visit every October. But whenever we came, I felt good. I felt safe, not sad.
A grave is just a grave, and I don’t think Gramps and Nana are sentient ghosts who know we’re paying them a visit. But the memories I have of them—Nana’s goulash and early morning games of rummy and Gramps laughing harder than we did at cartoons on television—those are still alive, and they grow much brighter when I’m at Evergreen Memorial.
I thought I knew the path to the graves better than I do, because we get turned around twice before Klaudie points ahead and says, “No, no. It’s this way. It’s just there.”
She’s right. We come to a stop at the large, rounded cut of limestone that reads:
Dominic Jan Zelenka
February 7, 1942–October 2, 2008
Irma Marie Zelenka
September 23, 1945–October 2, 2008
Beloved parents and grandparents
You were loved.
“Hey, you two,” I whisper, crouching at the grave. I scoop up a collection of wilted roses, then pull back the plastic from my sunflower bouquet and set it in the old bouquet’s place.
Klaudie settles into a cross-legged sit beside me. She tears away the plastic from her own bouquet and rests it beside mine. Then we sit there, and I hear the faint, stuttering sound of Klaudie crying.
I don’t feel sad, but I’m thoughtful. I’m thinking of what Klaudie said, about Mom and Dad trying to make more family for themselves. The pregnancy was an accident, but what this kid is? What this kid is going to be? Maybe there’s a reason in that. Maybe our family—some of us dead and some of us halfway across the world and some of us readying to leave town—maybe we do need an addition. This baby is going to turn everything upside down, no doubt. But maybe, in a weird way, we will be more stable, too.
Klaudie’s mind must be wandering the same wood as mine, because she says, “Nana would love the news. She’d call it splendifying .”
A gust of damp wind whips through the cemetery, blowing back our hair. I stare, mesmerized, at Klaudie’s moon-kissed face. She looks so dark and severe. She looks like a witch. Not the ugly, wart-covered kind. She is sleek and young and beautiful and misunderstood—a witch of Salem. Not that I would ever tell her that; Klaudie wouldn’t understand. Still, I can’t help but feel that if one tried to cast a spell over this graveyard, it would work.
My eyes grow sore from staring so long at Klaudie. I scoot closer and lean my head on her shoulder. We sit. We drink our Cokes. We stay there through sunrise. Though my eyelids are prickled and sticky from lack of sleep, they lift as far as possible to let in the pink sherbet light of dawn, thrown in sharp relief by a border of gravestones and cypress trees and a solitary mausoleum.