58

Leah

Friday, December 8th, 1989
Lucy missing 10 weeks

Today is our birthday. I can’t believe we’re not together. I can’t remember a time when I celebrated a birthday without her. I know I have. I’ve seen the pictures from my earliest birthdays before Lucy was born—me at one year old with cake smeared all over my face and highchair; my second birthday, me toddling around our backyard in a red pea coat—but all of my memories are of carting her around and us wishing each other a happy birthday all day long. Happy birthday, Lucy, Happy birthday, Leah, our own private volley.

My fever finally broke in the middle of the night, soaking my sheets through. Mom has stripped the bed and I’m running myself a bath, filling our coral tub with the hottest water I can stand. I haven’t bathed since I’ve been sick. I step out of my pajamas and slip into the scalding water. I lather up my hair in the tub, then drain the water, letting the suds foam at my feet and run a pounding shower and wash my hair a second time. After I’m scrubbed clean I get dressed in a long wool cardigan and jeans.

Mom has fixed us French toast for breakfast and I devour the buttery, spongy squares—the first real meal I’ve eaten in days. When she goes upstairs to shower, I step outside.

It’s bright and clear and when the sun hits my eyes, it feels like they’ve been bruised; it’s been so long since I’ve seen daylight. The wind is cold, sharp, and I pull my sweater tight around me as I walk to the edge of our woods kicking football-sized pinecones as I go.

“Happy birthday, Lucy,” I say, as boldly and as loudly as I can, but as soon as the words leave my mouth, the wind picks them up and slaps them to the ground.

At the car dealership, Mom and I sit at a round, gray table while an old man with a thick cough and polished shoes shuffles through paperwork for Mom to sign. Dad’s a no-show.

“Oh! I forgot the most important part. The keys!” he says, pushing back from the table, his polished shoes clicking across the even-more polished floor.

Outside, Mom hands me the keys. “Happy birthday, darling,” she says, and tears prick both of our eyes. We were supposed to have an early dinner at Steak and Ale, but without Dad, we’ve decided to head home and order pizza.

I climb into my new Ford Tempo and for a brief moment, I feel giddy. The car is immaculate with creamy leather interior and that new-car smell, and it’s the first car we’ve had with power windows.

I lower the windows and turn on the radio, fiddling with the dial until I find the top-40 station. “Shout” by Tears for Fears is playing. I turn up the bass and blast it, and dance in my seat. I sing along and am in a happy bliss until the next song comes on. It’s that “Rock Me Amadeus” song and a memory of Lucy rips through.

We are younger—she is eight and I’m twelve. The song has just been released and the radio plays it nonstop. One Saturday afternoon Lucy was alone in the den watching MTV and I walked in and the song was playing and Lucy was singing into a pretend microphone, standing on the coffee table, but she got the words all wrong and was singing, “Rock me on my desk.”

“What, do you mean like on your school desk?” I teased her and it became a running joke between us.

I’m a hot puddle of tears by the time I pull into the driveway, but I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my cardigan and try and make myself sound chipper when Mom asks me with childlike excitement, “So, how does it drive?”

We sit together in front of the TV eating our pizza, my legs draped across Mom’s lap. She has made us a tray of brownies and we each eat two before we climb the stairs to go to sleep. We kiss each other goodnight at the top of the stairs and I turn to go to my room but decide to sleep in Lucy’s room instead. I fold myself into her bed and whisper, one last time today, “Happy Birthday, Lucy.”

In my dream, I wake up in the middle of the night in Lucy’s bed. Her nightlight is on and she is sitting cross-legged in front of it, playing with her Lite-Brite. She sees me and smiles and turns it around. In a rainbow of colors, it says Happy Birthday Leah! I leap out of bed and hug her and take it from her and make one that says Happy Birthday Lucy! I spin it around to show her and she squeals, but then I take it back and write Where are you? She takes it from me and furrows her brow, and fiddles with it forever before finally spinning it around.

In the Bad Church.

Then all of the words fade away and it forms itself into other words.

Hurry Leah!

When I look up from the Lite-Brite, Lucy is gone.

I wake up covered in sweat. I go over to her closet and her Lite-Brite is on the top shelf, packed away in its box.

I think about the blacktop road from my dreams and the church that I fly by, but the only church I can think of near Big Woods is Shiloh and it looks nothing like the church from my dreams.

I climb out of Lucy’s bed and step lightly into my room. I open my diary and record the dream, and then take my pink phone into the closet—I can tell that Mom’s already awake—and I call Nicolette.

“Heeeey,” Nicolette yawns into the phone. “I’m just waking up. How are you?”

I’m sitting on the floor, leaning against my laundry bin, and say as quietly as possible, “I had another dream. About Lucy.” And I try and describe the dream as best I can. “We’ve got to go back out there.” I’m twisting the cord around my index finger, turning it purple.

“I dunno, Leah.”

“But you believe me, right?” I say, my throat tightening up with emotion.

“Of course, of course I do. It’s just—” she stammers. “I just don’t know what we can do about it,” she says. She sounds scared. “I don’t want to go out there again, I don’t want you to go out there again. I don’t want you to get hurt,” she says, her voice rising, and I know there’s nothing I can say that will make her change her mind.

I think about taking the new car, but I’m only legally allowed to drive it to school and back and to extracurricular activities. But Mom has a staff meeting after school every Monday, so I make a silent plan that I’ll go out there then, and I whisper, quietly in my closet to Lucy, “I’m coming. Hold on until Monday.”