Jennifer Longo - Six Feet Over It

“Every single one back in this bag or you’re dead!” He holds the pouch open and Elanor crawls good-naturedly to scoop the things from beneath planters and tables and baskets of bulbs.

“Sorry,” she says sincerely. “I didn’t mean to huck your toys so hard.”

“They’re not toys. ”

“Oh, really? Dice—for a game ?”

“It is not a game. It’s—”

She stands to smooth her apron, picks up her cup, takes a long draw.

Balin glowers, clutches his bag of dice, and storms back out into the trees. The brass bells remain stubbornly cheerful.

“Sorry,” Elanor says. “I’ve sort of got this—I’m compelled to wind him up and I know I shouldn’t but it’s just so easy. ” She refills my cup. “He’s two years older than me but you wouldn’t know it, right? Stupid dice. My dad’s a Dungeon Master so it means a lot to them.”

“He’s a master?”

“Dungeons and Dragons.”

I shake my head.

“It is so awful. Really, you don’t…? It’s like a game. Is a game—ten-sided dice, lots of note-taking… seriously, you’ve never seen this? You are so lucky. We homeschool and most of the other homeschool kids around here are Christian and their parents think it’s evil so it’s hard to find people to join their thing… dungeon, coven, whatever. The Master made me play till I got old enough to refuse… Oh God, sorry—you’re not Christian, are you?”

Homeschool. Morning deliveries. Pottery. Sewing… she probably makes those aprons.

“No,” I say. “Not anything.”

“Oh, thank goodness… I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with… I kind of figured, even though your dad’s got his thing with the angels, but the way he talks about them, and then look who’s selling them to him in the first place, talk about glass houses… Still, I shouldn’t—sorry. I need to think. My mom tells me that all the time, I need to think first.”

I nod.

“My parents don’t want us going to the Christian kids’ houses to play anyway. Bad influence, they think we’ll come home lacking any kind of cohesive logic skills or you know, become born again. Which is pretty judgey if you ask me, but… so mostly I’m just here with the Dungeon Dragons. And working. Lots of weddings. Landscaping. Funerals.”

At least Elanor’s voice is nothing like Emily’s. Elanor’s has this sort of lilt, and she’s got swimmer’s lungs. Her words pile into one another without stopping for breath.

Emily would love her. Which makes me feel even guiltier for wanting to, too, like I’m trying to replace Emily, an impossible task and not my aim at all. Besides which, being friends with me didn’t work out so well for Emily. Elanor is better off.

My head pounds.

Enya sings.

“Anyway.” Elanor brightens. “So where did you live? Before here?”

Where the hell is Wade?

“Um. Mendocino.”

Her eyes widen. “No.”

“Yes.”

“I have always, always wanted to go there! My parents never take time off. I’ve begged for us to all to go to the ocean together—and Mendocino is so close—but they think the plants won’t survive without them. It’s ridiculous. The second I can drive, that’s the first place I’m going. You must miss it.”

I nod.

“You go to school, yes?”

I nod.

“What grade?”

“Ninth. At the high school.”

“Is it fun?”

I shake my head.

“My mom says you have a sister.”

I nod.

“Younger?”

“Older. Sophomore.”

“I would love a sister. My dad says Balin really wanted a sister when he was little but now all we do is fight about dice so I guess be careful what you wish for.” She takes my empty cider cup and drops it with hers in a sink full of terra-cotta pots.

The bells ring once more, and Wade finally backs in lugging a last flat of flowers. “Okay, you ready?” he says, as if he’s been waiting all this time for me to wrap up some lengthy business.

I follow him to the truck. Elanor tags along.

“Well. Maybe I’ll see you at Sierrawood sometimes. You work every weekend?”

I shake my head.

“Just after school?”

I nod. She smiles.

Her mom and dad come out then to lift the bored willow gate angel carefully into the flatbed beside the flowers. The dad wears baggy purple patchwork pants and has a long gray ponytail that I have an impulse to snip off with some pruning shears. He lifts wire-framed glasses and wipes sweat from his eyes.

“Wade’s daughter?” He extends a calloused hand. I nod and offer him my own cider-warmed one.

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, milady,” he moons, bowing deeply.

In the periphery I see Elanor’s head drop into her hands.

I nearly smile.

“We’ll call when the cherubs come in!” her mom trills, waving as Wade moves the truck slowly past the willow-bough gates. Cherubs. She’s got Wade dialed. He honks.

I rest my head against the door and roll the window down for air, my stomach easing up the farther we get from the trees of Rivendell, from Elanor’s earnest, eager urgency. In the rearview mirror she stands in the road beneath the pines, waving.

“See?” Wade says, claps my knee. “How fun was that, right?”

The angel is so heavy she nearly breaks my back, but we get her to Sierrawood and planted safely in the lawn and Wade is right. She is perfect here in the daycare, watching over the babies. I lug the flowers from the truck.

“Let’s go to Mama Dicarlo’s tonight,” Wade says. “Birthday spaghetti, yeah?”

Amazing. He remembered. I wonder if Meredith will put her paintbrush down to fulfill her time-honored tradition of box-baking our birthday cakes. Duncan Hines, canned frosting, number-shaped candles. Last year I had two cakes: one coconut made from scratch with Emily and her mom after school, one devil’s food from a box at home with the Fools.

For the first time in months I think I may be hungry.

“Okay,” he says, and cranes his neck past me, squints into the rising sun, searches the graves. He smiles, bouncy and excited. “Ready for your surprise?”

“What?”

“Birthday! Birthday surprise, are you ready?”

“No.”

“Want to guess what it is? Do it! You’ll never figure it out—guess!”

“I don’t know.”

“Guess!”

“I get to quit?”

“Close! No. Not really. Not at all—trust me. You already love it.”

Someone is spinning headstones. For the longest time I thought spinning meant actually spinning each stone, but really it involves wearing big goggles and swinging a loud weed-whacker spinning-blade type thing to cut the grass around each stone, crop it close. Headstone haircut.

Wade waves. The person waves back, tugs off the goggles, silences the spinner.

“Okay, listen… you are now Sierrawood Hills’ official interpreter! You ready?”

“No. Wait, what ?”

The person is walking through the graves toward us.

Wade gets all sotto voce. “He got here last night. He’s got some English words, but I don’t know how much he understands, so just talk… really… slowly. ”

I wince and wipe my sweaty hands on my jeans.

“Dario!”

He is taller than Wade and a lot younger, but older than me and dark—dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes—smiling in blue jeans and a brand-new blue T-shirt, Sierrawood Hills Memorial Park in loopy white script across the shoulders. This is Wade’s idea of a uniform for us all—members of the most ridiculous softball team in America. “Leigh, say hello to Sierrawood Hills’s brand new director of grounds maintenance!”