Dear Little Jo,
Sylvan was supposed to have finished the chimney cap on your roof yesterday, but it was regen not mooi. Now they’ve moved on to a job across town so he asked me to come by after school and take care of it.
Shayna answered your door and said, Lyle’s not home but whatever, go ahead. It was a five-minute job that turned into forty minutes thanks to Shayna and Bron throwing cookies up to the roof for me and stealing my ladder and pointing out to me all of Lyle’s pot plants hidden among the tall weeds in your backyard. I guess it’s party time at the Hopkirk house when Lyle has an out-of-town gig.
They asked me to stay for supper. They asked if I wanted a Coke. They asked if I was a pad thai fan, because Bron was making her vegan pad thai and they defied me to miss the meat. Bron’s words: I defy you to miss the meat.
I said, I don’t care about meat as much as people think.
I didn’t think about how weird it would sound until it came out. Bron started laughing, saying, What does that even mean? So I had to explain that people always assume I must be this strict carnivore because I’m so tall. And because it’s a football cliché. Steak and eggs for breakfast et cetera.
I didn’t ask them about you, Jo. It seemed weird to ask I guess. But I pictured you upstairs lying in your tent. I don’t know why I thought you would be in your tent at that time of day, but I did. At one point I went upstairs to use the bathroom but your bedroom door was closed.
So Bron is in the kitchen cooking her pad thai. Shayna’s telling us all these stories from school. At first I sit in the living room with her, but Bron is not really happy being in the kitchen by herself. She keeps popping out to say, What? Who said that? No way. That’s not how I heard it. Et cetera. She’s spending more time in the kitchen doorway dropping bits of green onion on the rug than she is actually cooking.
Finally I go stand in the kitchen doorway so the three of us can talk back and forth and Bron can stop abandoning the stove. She’s making big piles of carrots and cabbage and ginger. Everything cut into tiny slivers. I mean I actually like to cook, so I was watching how she did it.
Bron has these amazing ideas, but she isn’t the best on the follow-through is she? She fries up the onion and ginger okay. She puts the rest of the vegetables into the pan but then leaves them just sitting in there. We’re out in the living room talking to Shayna, and I can tell Bron is not even thinking about the food anymore. She is describing how a tanker car on a train will explode if it derails. Apparently they want to route these oil tanker cars right through downtown Minneapolis, so Bron is planning to write an article about how dangerous it is.
But I mean I can smell the carrots starting to scorch. So I go back to the kitchen and stir it all around. I find a lid in the cupboard and add a bit of water to the pan and cover it.
Bron follows me and goes, Oh, awesome, thanks, but she’s still not really paying attention. You should see the way they buried the public safety and risk statistics in their report, she says.
Listen, listen to this. Shayna, listen, your voice says.
It’s you, Jo. You’ve come tearing downstairs right past the kitchen without noticing me standing in there. You’re sitting next to Shayna on the couch with your mandolin. You’re barefoot. Still in your starchy, high-collar shirt from school, but it is unbuttoned and hanging off one of your shoulders.
You don’t look up to see us in the kitchen doorway, and Shayna lifts her finger to her mouth and grins, so I stay quiet.
What is that song you sang? I had never heard it before. I’ve been listening to bluegrass but it didn’t sound like bluegrass. Some kind of Renaissance song maybe. Some ballad. The song itself didn’t even matter once you started to sing though. The whole point was your voice.
Bron is standing there beside me in the doorway with a package of tofu in her hands. I mean none of us even moves after you start to sing. We barely breathe.
You sit right at the edge of the couch with one bare foot reaching forward for balance, tapping the beat. Your collarbone sticks out when you strum. When you sing you lean forward with your eyes closed and your head tilted up to the ceiling. It’s like you are listening to some other person singing inside you.
And it sounds like another person too. Or it’s not a person at all—maybe more like a creature. An animal. Your voice has broken, is breaking. I mean I guess that’s what you are demonstrating to Shayna. What did she call it afterward? The ravages of puberty.
You are singing in this new voice of yours. A crazed split-note tenor crawling up the scale like a creature outrunning death. Like a wild creature’s death song. I guess it was something about the contrast. Such a civilized, old-fashioned love song sung in a savage voice like that, and watching your throat make such a sound. I mean it made the hair stand up on my arms and my scalp prickle. I felt Bron shiver beside me.
You sang these words: And still I hope someday that you and I will be as one. And meanwhile your voice somehow sang the opposite: that there was pretty much no hope of any reunion or happy ending. It must have been the contrast that was so beautiful and creepy.
Afterward Shayna reached over and put her hand over your mouth even though you’d already finished the song. Goddamn, Jonathan Hopkirk, she said.
You laughed and tossed your mandolin onto the sofa cushions and butted your head into her side. You heard that, you said. You heard it, right? Did you hear that voice? That was me!
Bron tucked the package of tofu under her arm and started applauding to signal that we were standing there.
I turned fast and ducked back into the kitchen. I don’t know. I needed a minute to get my face in order. I mean it’s one thing to write letters. It’s another thing to be invited by your dad for dinner. But it’s a different thing to show up by surprise. To watch you doing something private. Or something not quite public, anyhow.
Sure enough when I came back into the living room you were hiding behind the sofa, down between the sofa and the front window.
Hi, Kurl, you said, but you sounded strangled.
Hi, I said. Shayna and Bron were killing themselves laughing. I came over and looked behind the sofa but you held up your hands to shield your face.
Oh, don’t cry, Jojo, Shayna said. Come on out. We love your totally fucked-up voice, don’t we, guys?
We love it, Bron said.
We do, I said. We love it.
So you came out. You had buttoned up your shirt, but your hair had rubbed along the back of the sofa or something because it was sticking out everywhere.
Saying not to cry makes him cry, Bron explained. It’s like Pavlov and his dogs.
Something’s burning, I told her.
The peanut sauce! Bron gave a shriek and ran to the kitchen.
It’s not real crying, you said. I just wasn’t expecting you.
I know, I said. I’m sorry.
I was asleep before, you said.
I figured, I said. Your Inner Sanctum.
His what? Shayna asked, but neither of us told her.
You smiled, still sort of teary.
I don’t know exactly what to say about Bron’s pad thai. The noodles were all stuck together. It tasted like ketchup, basically. I ate three helpings because I was shaky with hunger by then. I volunteered to cook next time. I make an excellent schnitzel, I said. I thought schnitzel was a normal food that everyone knows about, but I guess it isn’t. It had the three of you rolling around laughing.
After we ate, we all took turns arm wrestling. When it was you against me, Shayna put her hands over ours to pull in your direction. I’ll save you, Jojo! she said.
Don’t call me that, you said. And don’t help. I’ve got this. You stood up and leaned your weight into it. Oh my God, you said, it’s like felling a tree.
Strong oaks from tiny acorns grow, I said, and again you all thought it was the most hilarious thing you’d ever heard. I don’t know where I even got it from.
Ancient Kurlansky wisdom! Bron said, and maybe she was right.
I’m aware I’m doing the same thing you did in that letter after Lyle had us to dinner. I’m writing a blow-by-blow of everything everybody said. Every little joke and look and movement. I mean you were there in the room too, so you hardly need me to do this. But I get why you wanted to do it. It all feels like it goes by pretty fast, like I could miss something happening unless I take some extra time and write about it afterward.
We got you to sing some more. Bron requested “Imagine” and it was like the apocalypse.
It hurts, Bron said, and I mean that literally. Physically. She said, It makes my tits ache.
I have to say I understood exactly what she meant. The sound of your voice pressed on my chest like my ribs had shrunk. My throat felt like I’d been screaming.
One thing I was noticing was that every time Bron or Shayna called you Jojo, you said, Don’t call me that. But a few minutes later they would do it again.
So just before I left, I asked you: Do you mind it when I call you Jo?
That depends, you said. Does it still mean Jerkoff?
No! I laughed. I swear I’d forgotten all about that since the first few letters. I said, It’s just that I’ve come to think of you as Jo.
Well, then it’s okay, you said.
Okay, I said.
Okay, you said again.
Sincerely,
AK