Sunday's on the Phone to Monday (26 page)

The form of branding had a low ante, as she could let the marks die in the bath. They were nothing like the scars on her chest: there forever, or at least until shortly after the rest of her life.

Decanting her soul into words created a wall of protection around it. Once she put a feeling into a poem, the sensation became at once immortalized and less real—a story, as there was no way she could have possibly captured every feeling and sensation she had. Writing things down detached Lucy from them.

What's new, peanut?
Her father entered the room holding two decaf lattes.

Dad!
yelped Lucy.
You scared me.

Sorry. Don't you look just like a rock star this morning?

Can I be Robert Plant?
Lucy set two fingers on her neck. The pulse of her new Heart bounced.

He wishes! Which reminds me, I saw a girl who looked like you at the coffee shop. Only of course, she wasn't as beautiful.

Lucy lifted the top and sipped the crème, musing.
What about her reminded you of me?
She very much enjoyed when other people thought about her during moments she had no participation in. It reminded her of the tightened impact she was leaving on the world.

She was reading
The Invisible Circus.

Dad! That's one of my favorite books!

She also kept yawning.

Yawning reminds you of me?
It was incredible. Lucy couldn't control what about her sparked associations for people.
I yawn a lot?

Kid, you do,
her father insisted.

So, what else is new?

Claudio handed his daughter the evening papers.
I have to warn you, though, it's mostly bad news.

Lucy looked at the front page of the international news.
Another war? Again?

It's the same war,
said her father.

It's always the same war,
said Lucy, shivering at how dreadful wars were. One side would do something terrible, and then the children of the victims would do something back, and then their children would remember, etcetera. Fear and loyalty.

What can you do?
said Claudio.
As long as love exists, war will exist.

I can't believe that.

I'm glad you can't.

I've been writing poetry.

Poetry, eh?
Claudio nodded, then winked as he clicked his throat, making a cozy typewriter sound. A dad kind of noise.

He knew very little about poetry. The last time Claudio had
read a poem, the Clinton administration had been in office. He wasn't a born reader. Mostly since he was far-sighted—reading came as more of a struggle than, say, catching a movie or playing music. Whatever he read, Claudio came across like he was suffering, like he was carrying all of his troubles in his face.

Do you remember when I was a kid and you'd read me to sleep? I loved L. Frank Baum and Lewis Carroll best. Oh, and Roald Dahl.
Charlie and the Glass Elevator.
You'd read to me in a tired voice to try to get me to sleep quicker.

I did?

You really don't remember?

Your old man has a lot of stuff he has to remember.
Claudio tapped his brain like an eggplant from the supermarket about to expire.

Dad, I wanted to talk to you about something.

Me too.

About your sister.

I know,
said Claudio.
Mom told you,
remembering the prior night, when he'd had one of the worst fights he'd ever had with his wife.
You selfish fuck,
he'd called her, and cringed to himself, recalling this. He'd never spoken to her that way before. He couldn't help it—he may have betrayed her trust, but at least he'd done it with the intent of protecting their family.

It wasn't that Mathilde told Lucy the truth about Jane that infuriated him either—more Mathilde's impulse to call out other injustices merely due to her egocentric inability to bear being duped. He knew she wasn't looking out for Lucy's best interest, no matter how much she said she was. But they'd made up, and forgiven each other, because they had to. All massive issues are diminished during the time of one's kin dabbling between life and death. (In this regard, weren't Sawyer and Noah lucky—or unlucky, depending on how you viewed it—not to have children yet, to have more freedom to carry out their divergences?)

I'm sorry. It was the worst thing I've ever done to you and your sisters.

That's what's bothering me. Why did you think it was the right thing to do?

I didn't. I thought it was the only thing I could do.

I just can't believe she exists.

She does.

Yes. I saw her with my very own eyes.

I'm sorry I wasn't there to, uh, protect you. But I guess that's my punishment.

I didn't need protecting.

What did you do?

Well, she showed me the pictures you've given her of us. And she talked about how you told her I love English class. And she told me she's also a writer, but she didn't show me anything she wrote. She also said some odd stuff about Carly's birth parents taking her back to China. But, uh, mostly she was good. Good and sweet. I really wanted to love her.

I love her too, Lucy.
Tears tethered to the nooks of his eyes. He swallowed.

I'd like to see her again.

We can see her as much as you want.

Do your sisters know?

I told Natasha.

Okay, so Mom and I will tell Carly tonight. There won't be any secrets left.

L
ucy came home from the hospital a week and a half after her surgery. The night before, Natasha figured out who had died so her sister could live. In Oxford, Mississippi, on November 2, all of the town obituaries were written for people old enough to die from age but for one, whose name had been Alan Douglas Rachmones, who'd been withdrawn just one week from his twenty-second birthday.

The Internet was a sea of lethal knowledge. After further research, Natasha connected that he died in a motorcycle accident. Dead on impact. That wasn't bad, was it? A splash of pain.
- Like it didn't count, -
Natasha wished. She studied his picture. Cute—panoramic jaw; a godly nose, dimples. Gorgeous eyebrows—Natasha, who always noticed eyebrows, felt ludicrously jealous of the ones he'd had.

Time told the truth: he died the evening of November 1. Natasha closed the newspaper. It killed her that she couldn't tell anybody. She went to the guest room, where her uncle Sawyer had been staying for the past couple weeks, ever since Noah had kicked him out of their apartment.

I have a little question.

What's up?

What's your biggest fear?

That's a little question?
Sawyer exhaled liberally.
I don't know if I have much of those anymore.

You have to be afraid of something.

I mean, aside from the typical human tragedies of losing family, being lonely, feeling Heartbroken.
His voice shifted.
When I was a little boy, I used to fear money. I'd have nightmares where I would swallow, then choke, on spare change.

Natasha had to laugh.
I beg your pardon?

Dimes weren't bad. They were tiny, easily digestible. Pennies were a little rough going down because of the copper, but still okay. I mean, it was no cup of tea, swallowing change, but in my nightmares, who am I to complain about the pieces that didn't kill me? It was the quarters that were the worst. The size of eyes.

Natasha said nothing. Uncle Sawyer said,
something's wrong.

Nothing's wrong.
Her sister was alive and she had a new Heart and she was going to live a long and healthy life, knock on wood, and god bless her, god bless the doctors, god bless their family. It was impossible for something to be wrong. She told her uncle thank you, and she loved him. She left him with a steady ache in her mouth, feeling as though she had just swallowed a pocketful of quarters.

That night, Natasha fell asleep to a Dylan record,
Blonde on Blonde.
Some lyrics sunk into her dreams.

The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face.

Natasha closed her eyes and opened her eyes and recognized the boy in front of her, eating a cruller, his fingers syrupy. He was a handsome fellow, and she was in love. She called him Jonathan Taylor Thomas, the name of her childhood celebrity crush. This boy looked nothing like him, but she wanted to christen him with a name she knew was familiar, one that had given the child-Natasha the chemical, synthetic representation of love. Besides, she knew his real name, but wouldn't admit it, even to herself and even in her own dreams.

He didn't ask her how her sisters were. He might not have even known she had sisters. He said,
it hurt. It hurt so much.

What hurt?

The accident.

Oh man.

You know what the worst part was? I was all alone when it happened.
He put on a suit and a tie.

Where are you going?
asked Natasha.

Nowhere,
his voice floating.
I'm extinct.

A rope fell out of the ceiling. J.T.T. handed her the rope, then left the room. Natasha grabbed the rope and pulled and pulled. She felt something in between a tremble and nuzzle inside her pelvis, a flicker that pounded into her like somebody flicking a light switch on and off. Natasha met a happiness that could only be discovered through sleep. She felt like a guitar that somebody could play.

She felt herself wake up, calcified. Four a.m.—morning, technically. What a start to the day. She was alone, bathed in scattered technological light—her phone, her laptop, her tablet all on. She heard the hallway bathroom faucet go off—somebody else in the house was awake! She opened the bathroom door. Carly was filling a cup of water.

I just had a really good dream.

Congratulations.
Sloe-eyed and soporific, Carly plopped her willowy ass on the toilet to make room for her sister.

But those are the worst.
Natasha bit her thumb.
You wake up and remember your real life.

What happened?

It was all a dream,
repeated Natasha.

You used to read
Word Up!
magazine,
quoted Carly, not missing a beat.

I was in love with this boy.

Who?

I don't know.
She was so ashamed of who he was.
I called him Jonathan Taylor Thomas, but it wasn't actually him.

What did you do? In the dream.

Ate donuts. Well, he did. I didn't.

Even your good dreams sound boring,
teased Carly. She scraped her finger along the edge of her cup. Her sister was right, yet Natasha was strangely fulfilled by her dream's humdrumness.

A metronome purr came from Lucy's room. Lucy was laughing in her sleep, nascent against her deliberate fort of pillows. It was the kind of night where they had nothing to prove she wasn't happy, nothing to prove she wouldn't survive this, and nothing to prove they weren't all dreaming this.

L
ucy had been dreaming of Carly and Stephen. She thought she felt Kitten pulse almost hesitantly as she lifted herself out of her body and into her sister's.

Lovebirds. The warmly woven, pluperfect voices. One belonged to her, stippled with laughter. She could now enjoy her life, occupying this house of a sister's body.

He said,
remember that time I kneeled down and reached into your throat to grab all of the softballs that were staying there?

She said,
it was terrific not to have a stomachache.

And remember when I accidentally reached into your lungs and punctured your alveoli?

I love the way you kisskiss me. It's always plural,
knowing exactly what type of love Stephen harbored for her, a mineral kind of love.

Stephen said,
plural kisses accompany a singular desire.

Remember that time we turned my room into a schooner?

Stephen said,
in the ocean, the fattiest parts of you get the coldest. They're the first to lose circulation.

Carly said,
you know what kind of love ours is? A fungus love.

Indeed,
Stephen said.
It grows and it grows, and it never runs out. Well, good night, Schnookums.

Night, Porcupine,
she said.

They said good night as Lucy woke up.

G
ood morning,
said Carly. She checked her cell phone to see if Stephen had left her a text message in the middle of the night. He indulged her with texts of whims and little importance. Sometimes just one word:
hello
or
you!
or
baby
or
mornin'.
They messaged so succinctly and so often, Carly's fingers contained the muscle memory of all the words she wanted to say. She could have been blind.

The three sisters met in the kitchen for breakfast. Lucy was waiting for her tutor to arrive. Her doctor told her she wouldn't be able to return to school for another two months, at least, until her breastbone finally healed. Natasha ate oatmeal with blueberries. Lucy made a smoothie with coconut oil and bananas. Carly buttered toasted sunflower bread.