Sunday's on the Phone to Monday (36 page)

of my eighth-life crisis. I decided to change,

and re-spelt my name with only consonants. It wasn't enough.

I spoke to Death before coming back once.

She told me she wanted a new name

for god. And the new name for god was

Alan. And Alan wouldn't start wars

or seduce suicide bombers this time.

—Lc(y) Mrgrt Smn

Sunday became Monday and Monday became Tuesday and Tuesday became Wednesday and Wednesday became Thursday and Thursday became Friday and Friday became Saturday and Saturday became another kind of Sunday. Time took up space in a discreet, votive way.

You should get sleep, peanut,
Lucy's father said.

Don't go,
said Lucy.
Stay. You need to stay.

Yes,
said Claudio.
I'll stay.
He lay next to her in her bed.

Don't leave me alone.

Never,
said Claudio, all the while thinking,
- Isn't she the one leaving him? -

Don't go away.
She yawned.
I'm going to go to sleep. I'm scared.

I'll stay with you,
said Claudio.
You're safe. And you have me, and you had me, and you will have me.

So good to know.
Lucy smiled with her eyes closed.
But Daddy. I already knew that.

The day is Tuesday.
- Do I still have it, this heavy Heart? How long does it remain broken in me? -
Lucy thinks.

C
arly and Natasha held hands beside their sister's grave. Everything outside and far away seemed to be moving faster than they were, like the moon was a bell being swung in the air by fingertips, like the stars were pieces of change pockmarking the night.

There are two kinds of sad,
said Carly.
There's regular sad, and then there's the sad that comes with knowing that the person you love most is underneath your feet.

Sometimes I believe that Lucy is a ghost,
admitted Carly.
She comes around and tells me to break rules.

Natasha laughed. She was twenty-five. Carly was twenty-one. Lucy would have been four months shy of twenty-two. She'd slipped into a coma the way one would a sweater. A few days later, they buried her, they buried Kitten. That day, according to the newspaper, forced disappearances were a growing problem in Mexico's drug war. A movie with Meryl Streep was released in theaters. An earthquake hit the California coast.

Carly didn't remember much about the two weeks in between, except that Natasha called Lucy by her oldest nickname, White Cat, and their friends visited. LJ and Sloane and Molly and everyone. They ordered pizza and passed it around and talked and laughed. Mathilde made sure everybody's drinks were filled. Claudio passed out napkins, and when people asked
him how the business was, he raised one shoulder and said,
it's okay.

The funeral was two days later. Lucy's fingers begemmed with her mother's pink gold ribbon and Italian cameo rings, her rich and retro striped bodysuit, tweed blazer, and solitaire heels, one of her clutches beside her. Carly wore Lucy's black cigarette pants and black halter top, dropping them off at Goodwill the next day because nothing was worse than funeral clothes. Mathilde and Claudio had bought a deep family plot with one gravestone, big enough for three people. Lucy had the grave on the bottom, and if they were lucky, Claudio and Mathilde would be buried above her. If they were lucky, Natasha and Carly would have families of their own to be buried with. Everyone would end up in the same place, and it would be justice for the time on earth her parents spent doomed.

That night, Natasha and Carly read their sister's diary together, about Face and Kitten and the whale and Alan dreams. They cried and cried and laughed every so often because their own Hearts demanded some laughter. And then some poetry.

The last words in Lucy's diary were
I'll send you a sign. Drop some face-up pennies from the sky at 11:11, or make some dandelion fuzz go up your nose. You'll sneeze and think of me. Peace be with you. I'm sorry for leaving you all. I didn't want to. You have to believe me.

Everything after the transplant was just borrowed time,
Carly would say now to console herself. That too was something Hannah the Holocaust survivor had said.
Everything after the Holocaust was just borrowed time.
According to plan, Holocaust survivors weren't supposed to live. Carly figured the same about Lucy.

Pictures of Lucy lived in every room: some lit by candles, some framed, most candid. Lucy in every room of their house, smiling and flat and from another, healthier era. Their family didn't know if the pictures made them happier or sadder,
but most important, they didn't feel okay without the pictures around. Grieving was like this. Or this: Natasha texting Lucy's phone the other day with
I miss you.
What did she miss the most about her sister? Her nose, she decided. Her little pointy nose and her long, marsupial feet and the way she thought she was all alone until she wrote a poem.

Stephen broke up with Carly a few months into college. He told her that it wasn't her; it was a problem coming from his insides, and that he was going to his school psychologist.

My sister died, and I don't go to therapy,
said Carly.
In the old days, a lot worse shit happened, and nobody went to therapy,
refraining from the mention of any precise parcel of history.

That night, Carly called Natasha and they talked about high school.
And we were happy and nobody was dead,
Carly screamed into the phone.

Then Carly lived without Stephen, dating a boy named Thomas who sang opera and drank a quart of olive oil once a week, and then a boy named Alexander who played football and gave Irish good-byes and when he saw pictures of Lucy, would always squeeze the wrinkly pit of Carly's elbow and told her how much he missed her even though he'd never met her.

Natasha studied economics at Princeton and graduated summa cum laude. Carly double-majored in history and art history at William and Mary. They came home on summer and winter vacations and listened to Claudio's records, old records of bands that still toured but with one original member, such as Creedence Clearwater Revival rechristened Creedence Clearwater Revisited.

Still a band, even after most of them left,
said Natasha.
Still playing their same old songs.

It's sweet,
said Carly.
Romantic.

I think it's pathetic,
said Natasha.

You know in Disney World, they don't call janitors janitors,
said Carly.
They call them cast members. As if that makes their job better.
They watched the cadences shake the wooden floors.
Who will stop the rain?
the music asked.

Claudio set down a new record, dropped the record needle, and instead of playing from start to finish, which he believed was the only way you could play
Abbey Road,
it fell in the middle of “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.” Because it had started in the middle, they were going to play it to the end.

Didn't anybody tell her? Didn't anybody see?

Carly had always thought the song had to do with a young girl, somebody like her, believing she was a criminal. A girl who broke into a home, stole something, then gave it back. She'd pictured Sunday and Monday and Tuesday as police officers (
Tuesday's on the phone to me)
, but coming to think of it now, she realized that the song had to be more than that. She still couldn't grasp it entirely but knew that the lyrics had something to do with time, and this congested her with a quiet, though spectacularly faithful feeling.

The record continued onto “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” “The End,” and finally the random “Her Majesty.” They heard about a pretty nice girl without a lot to say, and there was no reason to anything. Paul McCartney needed a bellyful of wine and they all listened very hard and nobody said anything and then at the end, Claudio finally let himself say,
I miss her.

Sometimes Carly grieved for Alan the donor and Lucy together, and every so often just Alan. Sorrow was water, the way it could pour or wave over more areas than one could anticipate, flood the most unsuspecting places. She'd think of Lucy's last months, the prize months, the months they both deserved and didn't deserve, with Alan's Heart, the Heart buried with Lucy, the Heart she wished she could give to someone else, the Heart that belonged to everybody and nobody.

Some water fell from the sky. Tiny bits of rain on the dirt above Lucy.
Remember the time when everything was okay.
Natasha's
voice fell slick at the end of that remark, turning their
remember?
game into purged conclusions rather than light-Hearted questions.

Carly stared at the grave, then up at her living sister.
Sometimes things were okay. Sometimes things got better.

I
t's gorgeous out,
Claudio said to Mathilde.
Can I take you on a date?
Every time they were alone, Claudio called it a date. They walked down their own block, both retired now, Claudio making good money after selling the store space to a dry-cleaning service. Now they could do things in the daytime without feeling guilty, like catching movies or doing Sudoku. Mathilde linked her arm through Claudio's. She was wearing makeup that looked like she wasn't wearing any at all.

I made reservations this morning for Purple Lune Bistro,
said Mathilde.

Good,
said Claudio, his nails to his illicit chest, scratching his blue Heart.
You know me.
Purple Lune Bistro was their favorite restaurant in Carly's college town. They were visiting her in two days. Carly's art collective had a show that featured three of Carly's oil paintings. The first was a portrait of her and Natasha and a headless body for Lucy. The second painting featured Lucy's face to the best of Carly's memory and blank faces to signify Carly and Natasha. And the third, entitled
In Abstentia,
was a blank canvas with three pairs of eyes. There were nine eyes and there were three girls. Once. And Claudio loved them, just as much as he loved their mother, just as much as he loved their aunt, and much more than he could ever love himself.

Speaking of, Carly called this morning.

I miss our baby.
The sun was in Claudio's eyes.

She wanted to know if we would be okay seeing it this weekend.

You won't cry?
asked Claudio. He looked down at the little tattoos on his thumbs. The one on the left said
Lucille,
and the one on the right said
Jane.

No promises,
said Mathilde. She probably wouldn't. It had been years, and she knew she would never get over it. Frankly, tears gave her a headache and she could exercise some control over her body.

They saw a penny on the ground, and even though tails looked at the sky, Mathilde picked it up. She was feeling less superstitious and more frugal these days.

What else did you tell her?
Claudio held his bride's hand and studied her eyes, her sutures of cheeks. Sweet Mathilde.

I told her to stop worrying about me and Daddy. That we're fine. That life is finally beginning to leave us alone.

I started
Sunday's on the Phone to Monday
as a book of poetry when I was nineteen. Most of it has changed—all but the Heart. Thank you to G. C. Waldrep and Shara McCallum, the two best teachers I have ever had. For the rest of my Bucknell teachers—thank you.

For Lucy Rosenthal, for guiding this novel through its early drafts at Sarah Lawrence. I will never forget your grit and wisdom. For my Sarah Lawrence poetry teachers, especially Jeff McDaniel, Victoria Redel, Marie Howe, Kate Knapp-Johnson, and Dennis Nurkse.

For my friends at Sarah Lawrence, in particular Daniel Long, for writing the most wonderful letter I have ever received; if not for his eye, this book would not be in your hands.

I thank all of the writers in my life who have dispensed infinite insight: Panio Gianopoulos, Alethea Black, Lisa Shea, David Gilbert, Joanna Fuhrman, Dylan Landis, Parker Marshall, Pamela Erens, Amy Shearn, Katie Arnold-Ratliff, Kim Stolz, Michelle Miller, and the good people at
Tin House
and the Gotham Writers Workshop.

For my colleagues and students at the Dalton School, City and Country School, Collegiate School, and the Professional Children's School for teaching me how to be a teacher.

For my agent, James Fitzgerald, for the conversation and laughter, and for treating my characters like human beings. For
Sally Kim, who saw this book exactly for what it was and pushed it to be the best version of itself, and for the Touchstone team, particularly Etinosa Agbonlahor.

For Robby and the Cecot family, especially during the Brooklyn years. For all of my best friends, my muses: growing up in the Five Towns, at Bucknell, in New York City. There are too many of you to name, but you've probably already seen yourself on every page.

For New York City.

And, finally, for my own family: my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and Kenny, Paul, Mom, and Dad.