Secrets Sleep in Winter Clothes

Dead and withering flowers crunched beneath my feet as I made my way across a frozen field. The bare meadow was dusted with a layer of snow and ice, glinting coldly in the dilute morning sunlight. The old, battered snow boots I'd been lent left large, unseemly footprints across the ice-coated field, crushing frozen crystals and delicate stems under their heavy soles. At the far end of the field were the remains of a wooden fence. The splintered posts leaned tiredly toward the ground or against each other. A stand of skimpy evergreens, snow frozen over their thin branches and sparse needles, kept the collapsed fence company. Skirting around a slight rise, I shaded my eyes against the winter sun and looked in what I thought was the general direction of town. Down below, I could just make out the thin, muddy ribbon of the road. I followed this ribbon with my eyes until the little buildings by it grew closer together and formed increasingly larger groups. Somewhere down there was the funeral home. I was going to the funeral of a cousin of mine, an old friend I hadn't spoken to in ages. Emily Weyeth had killed herself.

A cold breeze blew at my back, and I shivered. Not that I wasn't used to being cold. We would come out to the farm every winter for the snow while everyone else went south. Winter had been mine and Emily's season, the only time of the year we would get to see each other. We would help her father string little white lights around the house, on the roof and over the trees near Christmas. We would cut branches from the cold, piquant evergreens, shaping them into wreaths; and garlands of sharp leaves and bright berries from the holly bushes out back. We lit candles in their tarnished metal holders, placing them on the smooth, worn tables; taking them into the attic, our sort of secret place.

The farmhouse had been renovated a while back, though I'd never gotten to see any of the changes. The renovations had started the summer after the last winter I'd spent at the farmhouse, the winter me and Emily were both fourteen. Tile had replaced the creaking floorboards and the clanking radiators had been lugged out in favor of slightly less antiquated space heaters with their accordion folds. I had driven up to the farmhouse for the funeral, and it felt like a different house altogether. The sound of my shoes was far too loud on the tile and the newly whitewashed and wallpapered walls couldn't have held the same secrets the old wooden ones had. I said hello to my aunt and uncle, and I'm so sorry, and I loved Emily like a sister. They said hello back, and Yes, we'll all miss her, it was so sudden, and By the way, Alison, what is it exactly you're doing for a living nowadays?

For a second, I had no idea how to answer. Odd jobs, I'd said, a second too late. We see, they'd replied. It was a complete and utter lie. About the odd jobs, I mean. I barely know how to change a flat tire. But lies were better in this case; pretty much anything was better than the truth. I was a hairbreadth away from being homeless, and it was winter, and my apartment was tiny and it had whitewashed walls and tile floors and cloudy glass windows and accordion space heaters just like the farmhouse, and oh God oh God oh God. The publishing company said they'd look at my manuscript, but it's been months and they still haven't called. All the other companies I've gone to said no; one of them didn't even read a word I'd written, they just looked at me - a scruffy, unattractive high-school dropout - and took the liberty of deciding my future for me. And no one wants to hire a high-school dropout these days for anything past flipping burgers.

I wanted to be a writer since forever. I just loved it so much, the letters racing toward the edges of the pages, the pages stacking up, breathing life slowly into delicate fictions, like glassblowers forming their ornaments, until they seemed more real than life. I wanted to make a future from it, I could just see it so clearly, shaping itself in the darkness as I lay in bed. I was sure I could do it. You needed three things to turn a dream into a career - love, skill, and luck. Love I filled, filled to every corner, every tiny point. I wasn't terribly short on skill either, I've only spent two-thirds of my life practicing. Luck I figured I would come across sooner or later. I mean, I had enough luck to be a decent writer, didn't I? And it should've worked out. In theory, it worked out beautifully.

I was just so sure I could do it, I hadn't thought about a back-up at all. And of course my parents were against it. From the start, they'd had expectations of me, and they never quite forgave me when I didn't live up to those expectations. Lawyers, doctors, accountants - the blood ran thick in the family. My thin writer's blood was like a stigma on their logical, analytical skins. And when I dropped out of high school, that was pretty much the final straw. My parents didn't quite disown me, but it was like an unspoken agreement between us - I wasn't permitted to show my face around them or communicate with them for a long time, but hey, I could do whatever I wanted with my life now.

And really, just how necessary is high school? Textbooks, worksheets, lectures, tests, forgetting everything you once tried so hard to retain. Pages of timelines and equations blurring as they flipped past your eyes, so fast you got dizzy. And who wanted to spend so much energy dodging the snares everyone else threw at you - teeth nailing you to one set of traits or another. You walked on the edge of a cliff and there were always gusts of wind blowing at your back, hands pulling at the hems of your pants, trying to make you fall into something you weren't but something they wanted you to want to be.

A few months back, I'd sent a note to my parents, unsalutationed and unsigned. It consisted of three words, one of the simplest sentence structures. Subject, predicate, predicate complement. No adornments; no elaboration, justification or circumlocution. (Unlike now.) I am happy. I was happy - I had a day job, I had my own apartment, I'd sent copies of my manuscript to several publishers and was awaiting approval. Things have changed since then, but if you were to ask if I was still happy, I would still say yes. Part of me can't admit to myself that maybe my brilliant plan had backfired ever so slightly. Part of me was afraid of that admittance, for fear that the minute I acknowledged it to its face, my parents would immediately somehow know as well, and start chuckling to themselves, breaking out the eggnog for a toast. And the last part of me genuinely felt it - I was happy because I was struggling. I was a starving writer, and there was nothing I would rather be. There was just something about the act of struggling; something deep and rich, and dare I even say...beautiful?

But then I got the call saying Emily had died, and things had changed. I realized that maybe I was more than struggling - desperate, sliding off the edge, losing it. Whatever it was. But I wouldn't think about that. Unhappy thoughts are best left pushed to the back of the mind, and that was something I'd always been good at. I drove back out to the farm for the funeral, the old car's engine clanging and clunking, the heating on full blast but only gasping out lukewarm puffs of air. I prayed nothing would break down, that I wouldn't have to push the old wreck the rest of the way to the farm. Nothing did, and I guess that was something.

I never would have pegged Emily as someone who would just...off herself. But then, I hadn't seen her for five years. Things changed. I didn't know she'd been depressed, I'd known nothing of her life at the time. Her parents, my aunt and uncle, didn't have any idea either. She was fine, they kept insisting, as if repetition was the key to realization. Honestly, though - just consider Emily. Easygoing yet ambitious farm girl with a talent of lighting up the air around her. Really, farm girl and OD'd are at opposite ends of the spectrum. People with tragic lives OD'd - actors with large, dark eyes, or girls that had been abused and left to wander the streets. Not Emily.

The winter we were fifteen was the first we'd spent apart for as long as we could remember. My family went south with another family my mother knew, and we did the same the year after. The winter we were seventeen, a great-aunt of mine got sick and died; we had to drive to Georgia for the funeral. Last winter, I was on my own and I was happy. This winter...

The sun rose a little higher up the sky, its cold rays falling softly over my face, lighting up my hair. Pale red hair, better suited for fall than winter. Emily had had pale blond hair, hair that caught and reflected the snow in a way no one else's could. I was on the little road now, leaving behind the frozen, sleeping fields and little patches of forest breaking through the icy ground.

It was only a hypothesis, but I think, somewhere inside them, my aunt and uncle put part of the blame on me for Emily's death. I was her friend, I was her cousin, I was supposed to be looking out for her even when I wasn't physically there. And maybe that contributed to why they'd suggested I walk down to the funeral home instead of going in the truck. My aunt and uncle had some errands to do - stopping at the florist's, picking up other family members, that sort of stuff. And unless I wanted to jolt around out back in the bed of the truck, I should just walk down to the funeral home, take some time to absorb everything, put some healthy red back in my pale skin meanwhile. There had been a wake yesterday afternoon, and there was going to be another one this morning. Then the service, and then they would carry her casket outside and...

I'd arrived at the farm the night before last, two days after I'd gotten the call. My aunt and uncle had been expecting me, they'd ushered me inside with their eyes red and faces colorless, giving me tea. I could have gone to the wake the following afternoon, but I hadn't felt like it, and they weren't going to spend much energy making me. Instead, I lay on the floor of the guestroom I was staying in, staring at the little accordion space heater across the room from me, watching the squares of sunlight slipping in through the window move slowly over the shiny new floorboards. The guestroom had only a twin bed and a nightstand, pushed to the side of the room. Most of the room was just an empty expanse, who knew for what. I thought about going into the attic, our secret place, but of course never made an actual motion toward it.

The funeral home actually wasn't as hard to find as I thought it would be. Out in front of the little building was one of those boards with movable letters - the top half of it read Silver & Sons Funeral Home and the bottom half, the letter-board, read a simple 'God bless'. I sighed in relief. I'd had a longtime habit of looking for deep and life-changing meanings in public messages, and I was glad this time I didn't believe in God. So I wasn't a flat-out atheist, but my non-belief was just enough to make me disregard the statement. I pulled open the heavy wooden doors; a wash of warm air met me. Crossing the vestibule, I entered the chapel. My eyes met rows of empty pews, a choir consisting of flower bouquets, a Bible resting on the pulpit, and behind it, the dais...

It was still early in the morning; the wake started at nine. Unsure of myself, I took a seat in one of the pews, unbuttoned my long jacket, and took off the knit hat I'd been wearing. After smoothing down my hair, I realized I had nothing to do. I was alone in a church, hours early for attending the wake and then funeral of my cousin, my friend, after finding out she'd committed suicide. I should be crying. I wanted to cry, but, God, I just felt so empty, so empty and insubstantial, like the next wind that swept along could've blown me away in little wisps. All the pigment flaking off me in tiny flecks as my bones and guts fell in on each other. Imaginary silver threads inside my body ran from my brain to all my muscles and nerves, and it felt like someone had come along behind my back and cut out a section of the thread that connected to my tear ducts.

Mourn, my mind instructed my body. I couldn't. The more I thought about it, the stranger and hollower I felt. My fingers twitched, my breath stuttered in its cadence, and my - my spirit, my essence, my anima - felt a sudden overwhelming desire to fling itself from my skin. I imagined my whatever-it-was flying through the roof, streaking through the skies, howling toward emptiness.

Oh, Alison, Alison...

Do I look too skinny in this?

Let's run away...

We'll build our own house, and have a pet deer...

What do you think happens when we die?

Alison?

It's so cold out...Dad says it's the coldest winter for nine years...

Do you think I'd be a good, I dunno, model?

Alison...

Lis...

Somehow, I fell off the bench and ended up lying prostrate in the middle of the aisle. Through my barely-conscious haze, I heard voices just outside the room. I snapped to attention, dragged my heavy limbs off the floor and smoothed down my clothes. A group of old ladies emerged through the double doors, none of whom I recognized. They acknowledged me with somber, pity-heavy nods and moved on toward the viewing room. Word must have gotten out, then, that I was the cousin. I followed them with halting steps, lagging on purpose.

The viewing room was a plain, undecorated room - white walls with a horizontal band of wood running at waist level. Mounted to the wood was a shiny handrail, I supposed for people to hang on to when they were on the brink of passing out from grief. You actually had to go up a small ramp to get sight of the...viewing table, and go down another ramp going out of the room. The old ladies passed Emily, clicked their tongues and made their pity noises, and then I was left to go next. Here we go, Lis, I thought to myself. It's only Emily, it'sjust Emily, there's nothing to be afraid of. In theory, anyway.

She laid in a plain wooden box, dark, shiny wood that I couldn't name. They'd put a dress on her that I didn't recognize, a sort of frock with a tiny pastel stylized flower design on it. God, she looked so much like a farmgirl. That she'd taken too many pills on purpose, that'd she'd died, for Chrissake, was getting harder and harder to believe the more "proof" I saw. And yes, they had indeed put makeup on her to make her look better. It was sad and sick and I didn't want it; I didn't want to "accept" anything, I didn't want to see it, hear or taste or smell or touch.

I stood over her, over "Emily", feeling like I'd come to the end of a road and there was nowhere left to go. I stood there, noticing little things - her nail polish was starting to chip ever so slightly, her lips were chapped, there was a tiny knot in a strand of her hair, the powder was a little thicker on her left cheek than her right. And...there was something in her pocket. I reached my hand cautiously inside the little pocket sewn into the skirt of her dress and took out...a key, on a necklace chain.

I gasped, and something stirred within me, the first possibility of tears. Of course. Emily collected keys. New keys, old keys, broken keys, shiny and tarnished keys. I'd had no idea where she'd managed to get so many keys. But every time I visited her, she'd gotten more. They hung in the windows, from the ceiling beams, catching the sunlight, clinking against each other when the wind blew through. Emily especially loved old, Victorian-looking keys, like the one I was now holding in my hand; putting them on necklace chains, giving them away as gifts. The tiny, gold key had two teeth, unequally sized, and a thin neck culminating in an intricate lace of metal that vaguely brought back images of flowers and vines on climbing trellises. The roses we'd planted once out back...so beautiful, their lush sweet heads opening toward the sun - then a colder-than-usual spell in autumn, and not a single one of them came out alive.

A single tear slipped out a corner of my eye, clung to my eyelashes for a few seconds - I could see it quivering and blurry at the edge of my vision - and fell. I blinked a few times, then looked down to see a small drop that had soaked into Emily's white collar. I thought about the little drop, how all the water would evaporate from it soon, abandoning the salt. I imagined a few weeks later, a worm or an ant taking the tiny crystals home to flavor their evening meal. What did worms and ants eat, anyway? Dirt, crumbs, blades of grass...

From behind me, I heard new steps ascending the ramp. I put the key inside my jeans pocket and disappeared from view.

More people arrived over the course of the hours. The sun wheeled, cold and white, toward the center of the sky, sending down its narrow beams onto the acquiescent snow. The service started soon, so I picked a seat in the middle of the chapel and waited. I recognized my parents among the people drifting in and averted my eyes quickly. If they noticed me, they didn't try to talk to me. When the service started, I saw them sitting up front with my aunt and uncle.

It was a short, simple service - the priest announced a few comforting words, quoted some Bible passages, and before I knew it, it was over. The congregation slowly started standing up. My father, Emily's father, and two of my other uncles lifted Emily in her box and walked somberly toward the side door. Everyone else followed. Outside, clouds had covered up the sun, and the entire world was shades of gray. My father and uncles carried my cousin up the little winding path to the cemetery on the hill behind the funeral home. I clenched my fists and felt something inside my right hand. It was the key necklace. I never remembered taking it out again, but the little pendant was comforting.

We moved at a snail's pace toward the wrought-iron gates at the top of the hill, our soles heavy and our souls heavier. I thought about what a curious thing it was to die - you were, and all of a sudden, you weren't. Where did it go - what made you, you? It had to go somewhere, didn't it? I wondered where Emily was now. I believed it was somewhere nice - or at least I wanted very much to believe that. I wondered what it was to die. In my mind's eye, I imagined Emily - pacing back and forth, the bottle of pills placed at the edge of the sink, the early morning light barely beginning to seep through the little window. Or perhaps she hadn't paced at all, perhaps she'd just done it, gotten it all over with in one fell swoop. When the warmth started to course through her body and her vision began to blur, did her life flash before her eyes? I wondered what she saw. Had I been anywhere in there? Or had she only been able to see her misery, whatever had prompted her to perform such an act; was it her moment of triumph? What if at some point Emily had realized what she'd done, started panicking...but it was too late. Too late to take it back, too late for anything but regret. I felt sad thinking that maybe Emily's only companion in her last minutes had been regret; regret showing up in a corner of the room, draping its heavy cold limbs around her still-warm body.

More tears loosed themselves, tracking down my face, spotting my cardigan. I did not sob or gasp or squeak, I simply let them fall. Grown-up crying.

We were finally at the cemetery gates. They had already been opened. We wove through fields of graves, crosses and headstones and statues of saints all sinking slowly back into the ground. Everything just went back into the ground, everything you laid your eyes on. One day, the clouds will all get tired and fall out of the sky, and the wind will get too heavy and fall to the earth like a disembodied scarf, and the sky will crack into pieces and fall to the dirt, and then there will be nothing, nothing at all...

They'd already dug a hole for her, between two strangers. The priest said one final blessing over her quiet form. I wove through the crowd until I was right before Emily's casket. The thin chain feeling so insubstantial between my fingers, I slipped the key necklace back into her pocket. Wondered what the worms and ants would think about that. Emily's father and mother closed the lid of her casket, time seemed to slow down. The final resounding click sounded near deafening, felt like a thousand little barbs digging into my skin. All around, warm tears became acquainted with freezing earth. More salt for the worms' and ants' evening meals. They flowed, then froze in the ground, then flowed more. A river to carry you, Emy.

Some turned their heads, buried in a stronger one's shoulder or their own hands when she was being lowered into the ground. I didn't, I couldn't - this was Emily, she would have done the same for me. Five years wasn't that terribly long. A line from a song drifted into my head - Love is watching someone die. I'd been too late for that, but I believed love was even more than that. Love was watching someone being buried, watching as they were slowly sunk into the earth, watching as the shovelfuls of dirt started assailing their casket. The flung dirt made a dull, ugly noise, a sort of clumph. Each clumph sent a spasm of pain through me, waves crashing over my head, but I gritted my teeth, and the ground before us all eventually became level again.

Love was knowing they weren't in the world anymore, yet finding a way to function without them.

We can do this, Alison! We'll build ourselves a house of branches and grass, and we'll bring food and extra clothes and blankets and everything. Come on, please? It'll be an adventure! Our very own place...

It's the last Pop-Tart. Do you want it?

Alison? Are you awake?

I think I love him...

He never called me...

I want to travel the world...

Come with me? I don't want to be alone.

I am happy...

Lis?..

The sun broke free of the clouds. It felt warm on my skin for the first time since coming here.

Goodbye, Emily.

And suddenly, I felt...I had no idea how to describe it. Full? Not quite, I still felt the terrible stinging emptiness inside me. Resolute? Not that either. I felt like someone large and invisible was standing over me pouring a teapot full of some warm mysterious thing into the hollow vessel that was me. And I knew I would come back. I promised her my return, in the springtime, when grass would be growing for the first time over her grave. I would come again. One spring, when the grass grew high and sweet and waving, I would pick it and make crowns and chains and wreaths with it, hanging them over everything.

Everyone else had drifted off back down the road. I was the only one left. The sun at my back, I headed back toward the distant shape of the funeral home. The scene was less organized than it had been before the funeral, with people mingling in groups speaking in hushed, tired tones or eating trademark funeral casserole off paper plates. In the vestibule was a pay phone; next to the phone was a small pad of Silver & Sons stationery, and interestingly enough, Silver & Sons envelopes. I found a pen, wrote two simple words on a sheet of stationery, folded it carefully into thirds, and put it in an envelope. On the envelope, I printed my parents' address, and put the letter in a pocket inside my coat. I would send it later. The letter read, I'm sorry.

Outside, the sun was setting, sending its white-gold beams lancing between the skinny bare branches of trees. The western sky was a pale lavender color with peach and rose shades tinging the edges. I walked around to the side parking lot, keeping an eye out for the old red truck. My aunt and uncle were letting me drive the truck back to the farmhouse instead of walking back in the quickly freezing dusk.

I climbed into the driver's seat, closed the door, and sighed. It was pleasantly shadowed inside the truck. I stuck the key in the ignition and felt as the engine rumbled its way to life underneath me. Something about its power, its stable hum, comforted me. I backed the truck out of the parking lot, then onto the narrow dirt road toward the house.

And I knew I wasn't over her yet. I knew that what I'd felt in the cemetery was only temporary, that Emily would haunt me and hurt me for many more nights and days and twilights before I began to heal for real. But in this moment, driving with the sleepy purring of the engine like music and the fading sunlight slipping through snowy branches, I felt as if she were real. I felt as if she were there in the passenger seat, putting her feet on the dash. Fiddling with the radio knob. Leaning her head against my arm, chattering quietly in my ear, another one of her schemes.

And I felt the stirrings inside me, the words that slept in my veins awaken and whisper to me. The whispers built themselves slowly up, autumn leaves floating off the ground with the wind. Or flowers unfolding their translucent petals, raising their faces to the sun. Tiny cells building yet another story, while my warm insides fed and nourished it.

The sun sighed its last breath, the colors in the sky blushed and darkened, and I drove us home.