Jennifer Longo - Six Feet Over It

“How was it?” he calls from the trailer.

I shrug.

“Some guy called before—they come in for a kid?”

I nod.

“Where’d they put him?”

“Sunny Hill.”

“Aw, jeez! You sure you’re pushing Poppy?”

All the sensitivity of a frying pan to the head. He’s really into this Poppy Hill/Sunny Hill rivalry; there’s more space in Sunny, but he wants to get Poppy completely filled. I’ve dutifully avoided Sunny as best I can, but sometimes people want what they want. I don’t know.

“Well, try again tomorrow.”

I sigh. “Monday, Wednesday, Friday.”

He smiles.

“Can’t blame me for trying.”

Oh, really? I want to say. Because I think I can. I can go ahead and blame you for trying to trick your kid into selling graves more days a week than you promised she had to, and for thinking you could do it by betting I won’t remember what day of the week it is.

I wish I was the kind of person who could look his shenanigans in the face and just be all, No. A smart person. A brave person. An Emily person.

Emily would never have put up with this garbage. She would say right out loud, “There is no way in hell I’m selling graves for you, dude. Do it yourself.”

“Hey,” Wade pipes up, “how much Spanish do you know?”

“How much what ?”

“Español!”

“Like… words?”

Do two months of refried freshman Spanish in Señora Levet’s class count? Because so far, mostly we memorize verb conjugation grids, spend our afternoons singing “Parácuaro, Song of My Father,” and exchanging diálogos such as:

Me: ¿Te gusta musica?

Ken Dale, my Spanish partner: Sí, yo prefiero Sade. Mucho gusto “Smooth Operator.”

Me: Sí. Yo también.

Ken Dale: ¿Vamos a la playa ahora? ¿O quizás Taco Bell?

Me: Bueno! Sí, como no. ¡Vamos!

I consider my limited vocabulary, my frequent use of los when I mean las, and my complete lack of interest in why Wade’s interested in my language skills.

“Sure,” I sigh. “I guess.”

“Fantastic!” he practically sings. “ ¡Fantastico! Study hard, I have a feeling it’s gonna come in handy. Might be worth a bonus in your salary, if you know what I mean.”

“No. What?”

“Just what I said!”

“Okay, doesn’t ‘bonus’ mean extra money?”

He winks. “That’s right!”

“So… extra money, that’s what you mean. ”

“Yes!”

“Then what’s with the winking? Who doesn’t know what a bonus means?”

“It’s cemetery jargon!”

What? “Bonuses are not cemetery jargon!”

He hangs happily out the trailer window, laughing. Not at me—he just loves being the funniest person he’s ever met. I start again toward the house.

“Leigh!”

I turn back.

“You around Saturday? First thing?”

“Saturday?”

“Yeah.”

“ This Saturday.”

“Yes, keep up! The nursery charges extra for weekend delivery. Help me load the truck—five minutes. Ten, tops.”

I drop my backpack. “Saturday.”

“Yes!”

I pull my ponytail out, wrap the hair tie around my wrist.

“I guess I could ask Kai…” He hems.

“Okay, fine,” I say. “Just wake me up.”

“Good!”

He jiggles the windowsill, messes with a loose bolt.

“You know Saturday is my birthday, right?”

A loaded pause.

“Well, obviously!” he says, though his tone tells a different story. “Of course! That’s why, you know, I can’t have you here to ruin… the surprise.”

“Oh, really?”

“Sure! So we’re on? Saturday early?”

I nod.

“You’re a good girl!” He waves a socket wrench at me, ducks back inside the trailer.

Eyes up, I march over the mistake headstones. Safe in the house, I slam the door shut.

Waves crash. Gulls cry.

I drop my backpack on a chair, swallow two glasses of water, and follow the sound of pounding surf down the long hall to the laundry room, where Meredith perches on a stool before an easel, ferociously intent on the canvas before her.

Landlocked and yearning for the ocean, helplessly shanghaied by Wade’s ninja graveyard purchase, Meredith had one foot out the Manderleys before the first moving box was unpacked. She proclaimed absolution from anything even remotely related to the graves from day one. The minute we moved into Sierrawood, Operation This Woman Is an Island kicked into high gear. She went to work turning the laundry room at the back of the house into a tiny art studio, where she spends her days listening to record albums with titles such as Ocean Shore Sound Effects for Stage and Screen, filling the air with a predictable tide, the acrid scent of acetone, and the walls with seascape after seascape, all framed with weather-worn driftwood.

Wade loves to justify his hijinks like he’s done us all a big favor— It’s a solid investment, guaranteed income, you love it! —but has realized at last that with Meredith, he is skating on very, very thin ice, ice with a bunch of long-dead bodies floating beneath it. So he leaves her alone to Miss Havisham it up in the laundry room and makes rules such as No Talking About the Graveyard in the House When Your Mother Is Home. Which is fine by me.

I lean in the doorway and watch her paint.

“How was school?”

“Dumb.”

“Oh, good.”

Wist, wist, wist. She pulls fog up from foamy waves with a fan brush, wist ing it into a restless violet sky.

“Kai said to pick her up if it gets dark.”

She brushes up some white gesso, moves it around her palette.

“Well,” she says, “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

I close my eyes. Count silently to five. “Yeah,” I say, “I can see that. And she’ll probably walk. She just means if it’s dark when they finish. Just in case. Later.”

“What’s your father doing?”

I shake my head.

Wist, wist, wist.

Poor Kai. Between Wade and Meredith it’s a miracle she ever makes it home before midnight. She’s on the track team at school. They practice all the time, which is partly what absolves Kai of any obligation to help in the graves, but on the downside has left her more than once waiting on the curb outside school for Mr. I Love My Graveyard! and Ms. I’m Painting Some Seagulls! to remember to pick her up.

“Just please make sure someone goes to get her, okay? Don’t make her wait in the dark by herself. Again.”

Meredith nods, already back at the shore.

Waves crash.

I lug my backpack upstairs, turn the water on in the bath, and retreat to the cool dark of my room, where moving boxes are still waiting to be unpacked, piled against the walls, stacked in the closet. They still smell like the ocean. I did not pack them and have no idea what’s inside—a situation clutter experts say means I should just get rid of it all. Which would leave me with one drawer of clothes, a few pens, and some library books.

Meredith’s waves crash over even the sound of the filling tub. I pour in some kind of seashore-themed soap, drop my clothes on the floor, turn off the light, and sink into the dark, hot water. My hip bones knock awkwardly against the tub, Yorks lately being one of the few foods I can stomach. My head beneath the suds, the waves finally give it a rest.

“Leigh.”

The bathwater is tepid.

“Sorry, I really have to pee,” Kai whispers. “Don’t listen!”