“Yeah, I know,” my aunt was saying into her phone. “Thanks. Talk later.” She hung up. “Terri wanted to make sure you made it safe and sound.”
“Well, I made it. I’m not so sure about the ‘safe and sound’ part.”
I navigated my way into the living room, past a diving mask and snorkel, a shop lamp attached to a long, heavy-duty extension cord. Every surface was covered with loose-leaf notebook paper full of scribbles and sketches, old photos pulled from albums, photocopied documents covered in notes, half-full cups of tea, plates of fossilized leftovers. Pieces of clothing—a sweater, running shorts, a bathing suit, a terry cloth robe—were scattered and draped. There was a near-empty bottle of Ketel One Vodka on the edge of the coffee table.
“I didn’t think Lexie drank,” I said, picking up the bottle. Lexie didn’t like the way alcohol slowed down her thinking, said it was like putting on a thick, fuzzy bear suit that was hot and uncomfortable and made the world seem muffled. She claimed that marijuana leveled her out, helped slow her racing thoughts so the rest of her could catch up. I noticed a pack of rolling papers on the coffee table, a few spent joints at the bottom of drinking glasses.
Aunt Diane looked at the bottle in my hand now. “I’ve never known Lexie to drink either. She always hated the stuff.”
Sooner or later, I’d get used to Lexie being referred to in the past tense.
“Now this, on the other hand,” Diane said, picking up a baggie half-full of weed, “was totally her thing.”
I watched in total disbelief as my aunt began to expertly roll a joint. “What are you doing?”
“Baking a pie, Jax. What does it look like I’m doing?”
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
“You know me: full of surprises.” She licked the edge of the paper and smoothed it down.
“What on earth is this?” I asked, heading over to the antique sideboard that ran half the length of the room. It was where our grandmother had kept the silverware, the place mats and napkins, and all the fancy serving dishes and bowls we used on holidays. Now there were about thirty glasses and jars resting on top of it. The finished maple was stained with ghostly watermarks. Each glass was resting on a scrap of paper with numbers written on it.6/1,6/6,6/11. I picked up a glass. The water—if it was water—was slightly cloudy but had no odor.
“Heaven knows,” Aunt Diane said, pushing aside a pile of papers so she could sit on the couch with her newly rolled joint tucked between her lips. “I was here two weeks ago. The place was a little messy, but nothing like this.” She reached forward, grabbed a lighter on the table. I set the glass down and picked up a sheet of loose-leaf notebook paper:
F9: 6/11 6 a.m.—7.2 meters
F9: 6/11 1 p.m.—7.2 meters
F9: 6/11 10:20 p.m.—over 50 meters!!!
*** Must get more rope tomorrow
There were other papers—backs of envelopes, Post-it Notes, torn bits from brown paper grocery bags—but most were loose-leaf, lined with three holes for keeping in a binder. Lexie had kept a journal this way for years. A haphazard combination of diary, shopping and to-do lists, and a place to capture random thoughts and ideas. I once bought her a fancy leather-bound notebook, but she never used it, saying she was intimidated by how permanent the pages seemed. “With my journal, I can go back through and remove anything I don’t like later on. Or restructure things,” she’d said. Like she could keep her life in some sort of order by rearranging a journal. Many were covered with similar codes, dates, times, and measurements:J2;A7;D10. It reminded me of Battleship: calling out coordinates, sinking each other’s submarines.Damn you, Jax! You sank my destroyer!
I picked up one of Lexie’s journal entries:
May 13
Deduction.
Reduction.
Redaction.
How much has been redacted from the carefully curated version of our story?
The story of we. The story of us. The story of THIS PLACE! The story of THE SPRINGS!
GRAM KNEW! Gram knew the truth and said nothing.
Another paper held all the details Lexie had been able to find out about Rita’s drowning.
Facts I know about Rita’s death:
Rita was 7 years old.
Mom was 10. Diane was 13.
