Fullepub 
Chapter Seventeen
chapter seventeen
June 19, 2019
Isat beside my father in the front row on a plastic folding chair, holding his hand. I’d been a little girl the last time I’d held his hand. My father wore a worn black suit and tie. The same thing he’d worn to my mother’s funeral and then my grandmother’s.
“Lexie had the unique ability to pull people in, draw them to her.” Diane dabbed at her eyes. “She found ways to push me outside my comfort zone again and again. Those of you who know me know I’ve got a pretty wide comfort zone, so this was no small feat!”
Laughter from the attendees.
“She had this unique ability to see through the bullshit. To know what was really going on in your head, in your heart.” Diane’s throat hitched. “Lexie touched so many lives. That’s never been more evident to me than today, as I look around this room.”
The funeral home had had to bring in extra chairs, and some late arrivals stood hovering at the back of the room. It seemed half the residents of Brandenburg had come to say goodbye to my sister. Some I recognized. Some I’d never seen before in my life.
Beside Diane, on a wooden pedestal, sat a tacky gray plastic urn that was supposed to resemble granite. The funeral director had put it there. Inside was a small plastic bag containing Lexie’s ashes. I knew they were in a plastic bag because my father had taken the lid off before the service to look inside. “I want to see,” he said, opening the jar as if Lexie were a genie who might come bursting out. The bag was secured with a metal band and a tag with Lexie’s name. I’d looked at the small bag full of chunky white-gray ash, at my sister’s name on the tag—proof that she was really gone—and let out a small, strangled-sounding sob. Diane put a hand on my arm. My father had run his fingers over that tag, saying only, “There’s so little of her left.”
As the afternoon crept on, I realized he was right in one sense, but wrong in another. It was true that what remained of her physical self didn’t amount to much, yet Lexie’s vast influence, her spirit, it was everywhere. It was palpable in the air.
My father spoke first. He said in a sure and soothing voice, “Lex broke the mold. You hear that expression, and you think, sure, sure, but with Lex, it was true.” He looked over the room. “She was the person I was closest to in all the world. The one who always got me no matter what. Even as a little girl, she had things to teach me.”
He told the story of Lexie learning to ride a bike—how she skipped training wheels altogether and learned by pushing herself downhill over and over, refusing anyone’s help or advice. “She had more guts at six years old than most people show in their lifetime.”
Diane read the Mary Oliver poem “When Death Comes.” Everyone in the room was crying at the end. My own chest ached and heaved with shuddering sobs. When Diane invited me to come up and speak, I wiped my eyes and stood, making my way to the podium on shaking legs. My sister whispered in my ear. Are you going to tell them how you cut me out of your life, didn’t even pick up the phone when I called?
I looked out at the sea of faces, all eyes on me. Some of them had to know what a selfish asshole I’d been. I hadn’t come to visit for a whole year, missing Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then Easter. A thin, cool layer of sweat beaded on my forehead. I got the telltale throbbing behind my left eye that signaled a whopper of a migraine was coming on.
“I have so many amazing Lexie memories. I thought I’d share one of them with you today,” I began. I took in a steadying breath and continued. “When my sister was nine and I was six, she decided to build a rocket ship.”
People laughed; some people nodded. My father smiled.
“She got this old refrigerator box, covered it with aluminum foil. She cut windows out of the sides and on the top and covered them with plastic wrap. She dragged it into our bedroom and closed the door and pulled down all the shades. Then, she brought out this big metal flashlight we used for camping. She’d attached a tin can to the end of it, and over the end of the can was more aluminum foil with pin pricks in it. When she turned on the flashlight and angled it up at that ceiling, it was covered in stars.”
I closed my eyes and let myself really remember, go back in time. “Almost countdown time, Jax,” she’d said. “Hurry up. We don’t want to be late.”
I cleared my throat and continued my story. “We toured the galaxy that afternoon. We touched the rings of Jupiter, had a picnic on Pluto. Lexie made the stars spin until we were dizzy. I never wanted to come back down to earth,” I told the group. “My sister was magic.”
We invited everyone to Sparrow Crest for a reception. Before we left, people told us what a moving memorial it had been. Diane introduced me to one person after another until they all blurred together; I knew I’d never remember all their names. Each person had a story about my sister. I learned that she went to the farmer’s market every Wednesday afternoon and bought organic strawberries to make jam. I was asked if I’d ever tasted Lexie’s jam, and I lied and said I had. I was told she had exhibited watercolors in the local craft fair.
“I didn’t know my sister was a painter,” I said, unable to hide my surprise.
Marcy Deegan, head of the local art guild, gave me a how could you not? look, then said, “She was quite talented. She sold every painting she exhibited. I bought one myself.”
My migraine was coming on strong, and each new fact about my sister’s life felt like a screw being driven into my eye. There was so, so much I’d missed. So much I didn’t know about the person I’d once shared everything with.
“I’d love to see it,” I said. As soon as she left, I found my father and demanded, “Did you know Lexie painted?”
“Watercolors,” he said. “Did you find them when you were cleaning up?”
Of course he knew.
“No.” Only pages of scribbled notes. We hadn’t come across a single sketch or painting, or any painting supplies.
Ryan approached me with his grandmother, Shirley, Gram’s closest friend. She gave me a surprisingly strong hug for a woman who was eighty-eight. “So lovely to see you, dear,” she said. She smelled like hairspray and lilacs. I was reminded so much of my own grandmother it brought tears to my eyes. I glanced across the room and saw that Ryan’s mother, Terri, was talking with Diane. Terri looked amazing; if not for the cane she was using, I would never have guessed she had any health problems. Nodding at something Diane had said, she looked brimming with energy. Ryan followed my gaze, glancing at his mother, then back to me.
“I’m taking Grandma back to Edgewood,” Ryan said. “Then Mom and I will come out to Sparrow Crest.” He turned to his grandmother, raising his voice slightly and speaking slowly. “I’m going to go get the car and pull up to the front. I’ll be back for you in a jiffy.” He kissed her powdery cheek and hurried off.
“I’m sorry I can’t join you at the house,” Shirley said.
“I understand.” I took her hand. “I’m so happy you were able to come to the service.”
She squeezed my hand back, hard. “It’s tough to get old. It’s like being a child again—the way they all talk to you like you can’t hear or aren’t able to listen. Telling you what you can and can’t do, worried you’re going to tire yourself out, telling you you’re confused over simple matters that you understand perfectly well. Your grandmother, she was smart to get out when she did.”
I nodded at her, unsure what to say. She made it sound as if my grandmother had had a choice in the matter—like dying of heart failure on vacation was intentional.
“And your sister, well, your sister meant the world to me,” Shirley said, tears filling her rheumy dark brown eyes. She held my face the way Gram used to, got right up close to me, and said, “Lexie isn’t really gone.”
The last thing I was in the mood for was reassuring words about how Lexie was an angel now, but I nodded again, not wanting to argue with an elderly woman’s spiritual beliefs. I was relieved to see Ryan come back in and head our way. “Ready, Grandma?” he asked.
“Go out to the pool,” Shirley whispered in my ear. “That’s where you’ll find her.”
My whole body tensed. Then I took a breath, reminding myself this was an old, kindly woman, apparently with dementia.
I smiled warmly at her. “Thank you again for coming.” Ryan linked arms with his grandmother, said his goodbyes, and led her away.
My father was bartending in the dining room, expertly mixing toxically strong drinks for people from the huge array of bottles and mixers Diane had set up on the sideboard. He made a gin and tonic for Lily, who owned the bed-and-breakfast. She had come to the service with her daughter, Mindy, who looked to be in her early twenties. “She had a party up here, beginning of May,” Mindy told me. “She had the house and pool all lit up with candles! Floating candles on the water. God, it was pretty! Everyone wanted to swim, of course.”
I nodded, thinking the water must have been frigid in May. Who would want to dive in?
I did not get a chance to ask; I noticed that her mother, Lily, was flirting with my father. And he was flirting back.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Mindy said. She seemed to concentrate on pulling herself together. “When I think of Lexie, I’ll always think of that night. Of how she put a Fats Domino record on and danced and sang to ‘I Hear You Knocking.’ She loved those old records. Did you know what an amazing collection she had?” She hummed the tune, swayed slightly.
I shook my head.
Knock knock, Jax. Aren’t you gonna let me in?
In addition to the catered platters Diane had arranged for, guests had arrived laden with food: cold-cut plates, baked goods, casseroles, Crock-Pots full of meatballs and chili. People brought cases of beer, bottles of wine. Patrick and Jamie Brewer, who ran an organic farm in town, brought a bottle of homemade elderberry liqueur. Ryan showed up with a bottle of Ketel One, and as I thanked him, I made a mental note to ask him if he was the one who’d brought the bottle we’d found.
I’d had two glasses of wine, and was now drinking a large, strong margarita Diane had put in my hand. I knew the hard liquor wasn’t the best idea, but I was enjoying the numb, removed feeling the booze gave me. I’d taken three Advil, and even with that and the alcohol, my head was still hurting. I circled through the small crowd in the living room and kitchen, saying hello to people I half recognized, and being introduced to people who all seemed to know me. People who had stories to tell about my grandmother, my mother and aunts, and my sister.
“So good to see you again,” they all said. “So sorry for your loss.”
Gladys Bisette, who owned the general store with her husband, Bill, cornered me. She’d had too many of my father’s tequila sunrises and had spilled something on her dark gray dress. “I remember you and your sister riding those bikes—streamers on the handlebars, dinging the little bells. You’d come in to buy penny candy and sodas.”
“Yes, I remember. We always got Hires Root Beer. It was Lexie’s favorite.”
“Such good children,” she said wistfully. She took my hand. “Dear, I understand it’s soon, but do you have any idea what will happen to the pool? Bill, he’s got that bad leg. He was in Vietnam, you know. Shot,” she said. “Nerve damage.”
“Oh, I had no idea,” I said.
“Swimming in the pool keeps him limber. On his feet.”
“Don’t pester the poor girl, Gladys!” Bill said as he came up, face red and sweaty, whiskey in his hand. “To your sister,” he said, raising his glass then slugging it down. I raised my own glass in unison, finishing off the last of my drink.
“I didn’t realize my sister was interested in fishing,” I said as Bill moved to stand beside me. I thought of the fish in Lake Wilmore when we were growing up—perch, trout, pumpkinseeds. Was she really going to go after such tiny, dainty fish with a harpoon?
“She was interested in all sorts of things, wasn’t she?” said Bill. There was something odd about his look. He seemed to be implying that he knew other things, strange things, that Lexie had been interested in. Or maybe it was a look to remind me that I’d been away for a long time?
“True enough,” I said, excusing myself to go and make the rounds.
My head was swimming from the wine and tequila, and from all the things I didn’t know about my sister. Watercolors. Mary Oliver. Strawberry jam.
She had had a good year here at Sparrow Crest. And I had missed it all.
And now Lexie was dead.
She was dead, and there was no bringing her back.
The phone in the kitchen started to ring, just as loud and jangling as I remembered. I moved through the living room, feeling as if I were underwater, listening to pieces of conversation: Poor Lexie; can’t believe she’s gone; that’s the sister, I hear she cut her off completely. In the empty kitchen I picked up the heavy black handset. It was cool against my hand and ear. “Hello?”
The crackling static of old wires and a bad connection.
No. Not static. Water. It was the sound of running water.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” I heard the faintest whisper: Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Are you sorry?
I slammed the phone back into the cradle. Shit, shit, shit. I tried to steady my body and thoughts. Surely, I’d imagined it. It was the tequila, my headache, and stress combined with a bad phone line. I looked out the window over the sink.
Diane was out by the pool with Terri.
I watched them kiss; not a friendly, chaste kiss, but a long, deep one.
Now I was sure I was seeing things. Diane and Terri? They’d been friends since they were little girls. My mind spun in slow, drunken circles. Shit, was Diane the reason Terri and Randy were getting divorced? And Ryan didn’t know?
Terri pulled away, flustered. Diane said something, and Terri handed her a jar. Diane dipped the jar into the pool, filling it, then screwed on the lid and handed it back to Terri. Bizarre. While my grandmother touted the healing powers of the water, Diane was an adamant nonbeliever. She openly despised the pool. Did she believe, after all? Or was she just using the water for romantic leverage? Diane glanced back toward the house. She seemed to look right at me.
Embarrassed, I turned away. I poured myself a cup of coffee. I needed to sober up. Get my head together. When I looked back a moment later, Diane and Terri were nowhere to be seen. There was only the pool, the water so black it absorbed the reflection of the sun. It was like looking up at the night sky; I even saw the faint outline of stars there, stars that moved, making me feel off-balance and queasy. All those years ago, Lexie got me out of bed, dragged me down to the pool. Gram says it will give you wishes! I took another a sip of coffee, the cup shaking in my trembling hand.
The pool will give you wishes.
My head pounded. The pain behind my left eye was so bad that I felt tears streaming down.
Air. I needed air, but the kitchen door was still sealed shut. I left the kitchen, went down the hall and through the front door. The sun was blindingly bright. I shut my eyes.
When I opened them, I was on my knees beside the pool.
What was I doing here? I tried to remember coming through the gate, walking up to the edge, but my head hurt too badly. Between the headache and the tequila, my thoughts were running together, blurred and distorted like a chalk drawing in the rain.
The pool will give you wishes.
And what would I wish for, if I believed in such things? What did I want most in the world?
I looked at my wavering reflection in the dark pool, imagined my sister under the water, holding her breath.
I touched the water, putting a hand through my own reflection.
“I want her back,” I whispered to the water. “Please. I just want Lexie back.”
I thought, for half a second, that there was a second reflection there, along with mine; one overlapping the other. I held my breath, leaned closer. Almost said her name out loud.
Lexie?
Yes, Jax. I’m right here.
“You’re not thinking of going for a swim, are you?”
I jumped. Ryan was behind me.
“Because that’s what’s going to happen if you get any closer.” He eyed the water warily, like an old enemy he hadn’t seen in a while. He reached out his hand to me, and I took it in mine, standing up, staggering a little. “What do you say to going for a little walk?” he asked.
His hand still in mine, we walked out the gate and turned toward the garden. It was even more breathtaking than I remembered. The path leading into it was lined with yellow and orange daylilies tucked behind an edge of perfectly symmetrical fist-sized white rocks. Moon rocks, Lexie had called them when we were kids. The garden itself was laid out in concentric circles, with paths and a small gazebo at the center walled with rose trellises. Lexie always said the shape of the garden reminded her of a spiderweb. The garden was overgrown: The roses needed pruning and deadheading; weeds grew up along the edges of the path and in the flower beds. The green leaves and flowers were full of bug holes. But in spite of the neglect, the garden seemed to be flourishing. I remembered, as we walked, the afternoons Lexie and I spent out in the garden with our grandmother, how she’d rattle off the names of each rose: Aurora, Snow Queen, Maiden’s Blush. “Most of these roses,” she’d say, “are older than I am. They were planted back when the hotel first opened.” And it seemed so strange and fascinating to me then, as a girl: rosebushes older than Gram, older than Sparrow Crest.
Ryan headed for the gazebo, and we sat down on benches opposite each other, the way we had when we were kids. The air was cool and sweet. I wanted to hide out there for the rest of the afternoon.
“How are you holding up?” Ryan asked, his face full of concern.
“It’s surreal. I can’t believe she’s gone. And today I’m learning all these things about her that I had no idea about. My own sister.”
Someone closed a car door and drove off.
“I fucked up, Ry. I cut her out of my life. I missed out on so many things. Even her strawberry jam.” I started crying, which made the pain in my head more piercing. “She was doing so well for a year, and I missed it—”
“You have to stop being so hard on yourself. Lexie would have forgiven you,” he said. “You know that, right?” I nodded. He was right. My sister wasn’t big on grudges.
“It’s weird as hell to be back in that house,” he said.
“The last time you were here was the day you and Lexie had the contest to see who could hold their breath longer. And you said something grabbed you.”
He started, as if being grabbed all over again.
“You never came back in the house after that,” I said. “You’d come to the front door and wait for us outside.”
Ryan was quiet. So quiet and still that I was sure he was holding his breath.
“Jackie?” Aunt Diane was calling from the front yard. “You out here?”
“In the garden,” I called, jumping up. We met Diane on the path. She looked at me coolly, eyes reminding me that she’d caught me spying on her. Did she wonder if I’d been telling Ryan what I’d seen? “Marcy’s here,” she said. “She’s looking for you.”
“Marcy?” I said, the name not clicking.
“Marcy Deegan. She runs the art guild here in town.”
I nodded. “I’ll go see if I can find her.”
“I should check on my mother,” Ryan said. “See if she’s getting tired.”
“I think she’s out by the pool,” Diane said.
I didn’t have to look hard for Marcy. I found her in the front hall, right in front of the cross-stitch I’d rehung—To err is human, to forgive, divine—holding something wrapped in a white sheet.
“Hello,” I said. “Thank you so much for coming.” I touched her arm gently as she turned to face me. “We’ve got food in the kitchen, drinks in the dining room.”
“I have the painting,” she said, offering what she was holding to me. “I want you to have it. I think it belongs with you.”
“I can’t,” I protested. “Though I would love to take a peek—”
“I insist you keep it,” she said. “It’s what Lexie would have wanted.”
“This means so much to me,” I said. Carefully, I peeled back the folds of the sheet. It was like lifting the edges of a ghost costume, wondering who or what might be hiding underneath.
My sister looked back at me. I was so startled I nearly dropped the gift.
It was a self-portrait of Lexie’s own reflection in the water, about twelve by sixteen inches. Not just any water, but the pool. She had captured herself perfectly: her blond hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, the smattering of freckles over her nose, her eyes. I had no idea my sister could paint like this. She doodled elaborately when we were kids. In college she’d taken a painting class, but I’d never seen any of her work.
“I thought on my way here, perhaps this image might be… too much so soon?” Marcy said anxiously. “But this was my favorite. And they were all similar, part of a series. Of the pool. Sometimes with her reflection in it, sometimes someone else’s.”
“No, it’s not too much. I love it. What other reflections did she paint?”
“Women and girls. One of them was your grandmother. Another, your mother.”
Now that I would like to see.
“Sometimes people I didn’t recognize.”
“And where are those paintings now?”
“She gave them away. Or sold most of them. I know for a fact that each one in the craft fair sold. It’s mesmerizing, isn’t it?” she said, looking down at the watercolor in my hands.
“Do you know any of the buyers? I’d love to see more of her work.”
“Not offhand. But I’ll ask around and let you know what I find out.”
Aunt Diane joined us. “Have you seen your father—oh my God,” she said, looking down at the picture. “I’ve never seen this one. It’s incredible!”
We looked at the painting together in silence, Lexie holding both of us in her gaze. I covered the painting back up and said to Marcy, “Thank you again for this. It means so much to me.”
“It’s my pleasure, dear. And I’ll be sure to let you know if I find out what happened to any of her other paintings.”
“Thank you,” I said again.
I carried the painting upstairs to my room and laid it down on the bed for safekeeping. My eyes were fixed on Lexie’s, so many questions filling my head. What was she doing out at the pool that last night? What were all the strange coded notes she’d left behind? What had led her to believe Rita’s drowning all those years ago might not have been an accident? One question tumbled into another like a row of dominoes.
I thought of what Diane had said—that we’d never know what had led Lexie out to the pool or what was going through her head in her final days. But I knew that wasn’t true. She’d left clues. Insights into her thinking. I turned and looked at the white cardboard boxes we’d stacked in the corner of my room, full pages of notes, strange codes, journals, and photographs she’d left behind. I couldn’t have my sister back, but maybe if I looked through them, really looked through them, I’d get some insight into her last days. Maybe I’d find some of the answers I was looking for.
I was taking the lid off the first box when I heard a scream from outside. By the pool. I ran downstairs and toward the kitchen door, then remembered I couldn’t get out that way. I glanced out the kitchen window and saw a small gathering at the edge of the pool, and at least one person flailing and splashing in the water.
I dashed out of the kitchen, through the living room, to the front door, nearly knocking over a few guests. I plowed through the front door, around the corner, and through the open gate.
My father was beside the pool, soaking wet and coughing. Ryan was next to him, on his knees and also soaked. He had his arm around my father; his eyes were focused on the pool. Diane was crouched beside them. “Someone get us some towels!” she ordered. Two women I didn’t recognize hurried past me through the gate.
“Your father fell in,” Diane said, seeing me. “Ryan pulled him out.”
My father stopped coughing. “I’m fine. And I did not fall in!”
I saw the large bald spot on the back of his gray-haired head. His soaked clothes clung to his gaunt frame. He looked so sad and old, like a strange, broken bird. It frightened me to see him so vulnerable.
I looked at the water. There was something there, floating just along the edge. “What’s that?” I asked.
Diane leaned down, scooped it up. It was a paper boat folded together from a sheet of lined notebook paper. Diane shook her head, crumpled it up. “A piece of trash,” she said.
“Did you fall in trying to get that paper boat?” I asked my father.
“No! And like I keep saying, I did not fall in. I jumped.”
“Why?” I asked.
“There was someone in there,” he said. He lowered his voice. “It was Lexie.”
