Thursday, October 15
Dear Kurl,
My wardrobe is mostly composed of thrift shop garbage, in case it’s not obvious. I shoulder right in there beside the old ladies at the Goodwill, looking for bargains. However, I do attempt to bolster the overall quality and style of my outfits with a few one-of-a-kind vintage pieces procured for me by Mr. Ragman.
Do you know his store, way out on Lake Street? It’s probably never been on your radar. The owner actually goes by the surname Ragman; I’ve seen him sign an invoice. His first name is Mischa or perhaps Michel, but I’ve always called him Mr. Ragman. He has slicked-back hair and a fat belly, and he wears a black shirt with a vest and gold rings on every finger like a movie mobster. He’s in his late sixties now, and I am terrified that he’ll decide to retire before I’m old enough to drive to auctions and estate sales, or wealthy enough to buy antique clothing at market prices.
I can’t afford much of what Mr. Ragman sells. Most of his stock is women’s designer clothes, labels like Gucci and Prada. But Mr. Ragman has my measurements on file and will put things aside for me whenever they have a moth hole or two, or frayed cuffs, or anything else that will slow a sale. Shabby, some of it. But even the shabbiest of these items will still outshine the quality of anything you can buy in a store at the mall.
Yours truly,
Jonathan Hopkirk
Friday, October 16, 9 p.m.
Dear Little Jo,
Sylvan was supposed to have finished the chimney cap on your roof yesterday, but it was regen not mooi. Now they’ve moved on to a job across town so he asked me to come by after school and take care of it.
Shayna answered your door and said, Lyle’s not home but whatever, go ahead. It was a five-minute job that turned into forty minutes thanks to Shayna and Bron throwing cookies up to the roof for me and stealing my ladder and pointing out to me all of Lyle’s pot plants hidden among the tall weeds in your backyard. I guess it’s party time at the Hopkirk house when Lyle has an out-of-town gig.
They asked me to stay for supper. They asked if I wanted a Coke. They asked if I was a pad thai fan, because Bron was making her vegan pad thai and they defied me to miss the meat. Bron’s words: I defy you to miss the meat.
I said, I don’t care about meat as much as people think.
I didn’t think about how weird it would sound until it came out. Bron started laughing, saying, What does that even mean? So I had to explain that people always assume I must be this strict carnivore because I’m so tall. And because it’s a football cliché. Steak and eggs for breakfast et cetera.
I didn’t ask them about you, Jo. It seemed weird to ask I guess. But I pictured you upstairs lying in your tent. I don’t know why I thought you would be in your tent at that time of day, but I did. At one point I went upstairs to use the bathroom but your bedroom door was closed.
So Bron is in the kitchen cooking her pad thai. Shayna’s telling us all these stories from school. At first I sit in the living room with her, but Bron is not really happy being in the kitchen by herself. She keeps popping out to say, What? Who said that? No way. That’s not how I heard it. Et cetera. She’s spending more time in the kitchen doorway dropping bits of green onion on the rug than she is actually cooking.
Finally I go stand in the kitchen doorway so the three of us can talk back and forth and Bron can stop abandoning the stove. She’s making big piles of carrots and cabbage and ginger. Everything cut into tiny slivers. I mean I actually like to cook, so I was watching how she did it.
Bron has these amazing ideas, but she isn’t the best on the follow-through is she? She fries up the onion and ginger okay. She puts the rest of the vegetables into the pan but then leaves them just sitting in there. We’re out in the living room talking to Shayna, and I can tell Bron is not even thinking about the food anymore. She is describing how a tanker car on a train will explode if it derails. Apparently they want to route these oil tanker cars right through downtown Minneapolis, so Bron is planning to write an article about how dangerous it is.
But I mean I can smell the carrots starting to scorch. So I go back to the kitchen and stir it all around. I find a lid in the cupboard and add a bit of water to the pan and cover it.
Bron follows me and goes, Oh, awesome, thanks, but she’s still not really paying attention. You should see the way they buried the public safety and risk statistics in their report, she says.
Listen, listen to this. Shayna, listen, your voice says.
It’s you, Jo. You’ve come tearing downstairs right past the kitchen without noticing me standing in there. You’re sitting next to Shayna on the couch with your mandolin. You’re barefoot. Still in your starchy, high-collar shirt from school, but it is unbuttoned and hanging off one of your shoulders.
You don’t look up to see us in the kitchen doorway, and Shayna lifts her finger to her mouth and grins, so I stay quiet.
What is that song you sang? I had never heard it before. I’ve been listening to bluegrass but it didn’t sound like bluegrass. Some kind of Renaissance song maybe. Some ballad. The song itself didn’t even matter once you started to sing though. The whole point was your voice.
Bron is standing there beside me in the doorway with a package of tofu in her hands. I mean none of us even moves after you start to sing. We barely breathe.
You sit right at the edge of the couch with one bare foot reaching forward for balance, tapping the beat. Your collarbone sticks out when you strum. When you sing you lean forward with your eyes closed and your head tilted up to the ceiling. It’s like you are listening to some other person singing inside you.
And it sounds like another person too. Or it’s not a person at all—maybe more like a creature. An animal. Your voice has broken, is breaking. I mean I guess that’s what you are demonstrating to Shayna. What did she call it afterward? The ravages of puberty.
You are singing in this new voice of yours. A crazed split-note tenor crawling up the scale like a creature outrunning death. Like a wild creature’s death song. I guess it was something about the contrast. Such a civilized, old-fashioned love song sung in a savage voice like that, and watching your throat make such a sound. I mean it made the hair stand up on my arms and my scalp prickle. I felt Bron shiver beside me.
You sang these words: And still I hope someday that you and I will be as one. And meanwhile your voice somehow sang the opposite: that there was pretty much no hope of any reunion or happy ending. It must have been the contrast that was so beautiful and creepy.
Afterward Shayna reached over and put her hand over your mouth even though you’d already finished the song. Goddamn, Jonathan Hopkirk, she said.
You laughed and tossed your mandolin onto the sofa cushions and butted your head into her side. You heard that, you said. You heard it, right? Did you hear that voice? That was me!
Bron tucked the package of tofu under her arm and started applauding to signal that we were standing there.
I turned fast and ducked back into the kitchen. I don’t know. I needed a minute to get my face in order. I mean it’s one thing to write letters. It’s another thing to be invited by your dad for dinner. But it’s a different thing to show up by surprise. To watch you doing something private. Or something not quite public, anyhow.