The Alphabet Conspiracy

This Is Not True

66 This Is Not True After the wedding, I follow bride and groom down unfamiliar country roads lined by corn, back to the bride’s home. Her 93-year-old aunt is perched in my passenger seat, cranberry soup from the reception balanced precariously in the back. The bride is driving fast. In my bridesmaid gown, I work the pedals in bare feet, listening to Estelle’s thick Peruvian accent. Impulsively, I tell her she’s fun which is true, but her family ignores her sly jokes at the dinner table. She seems to be a thread gone south, slowly coming loose from their fabric. She glances at me sharply, pulls her hand up to her cheek, turns her face away. The bride runs a yellow light; I stop at the red. Estelle begins a new story, one about her sister Patty, their yearly jaunts everywhere until Patty became too sick, was fading out of her skin, leaving Estelle kneeling in prayer while she took the double-bypass alone. After surgery, Patty kept her lips closed against food, so Estelle brought in grapes that she had peeled. It was May and time to travel, but she held still, cut the tender skin of each grape, slipped it off. Nurses reported Estelle to the doctor, but she said grapes are very good for digestion, an old cure in Peru. She looks at me. “This is not true. I do not know anything about cures in Peru, but I know she will eat grapes, and the doctor believes me.” She laughs, then goes quiet. “We had two more trips after that. Glorious trips.” I grip the steering wheel harder, remembering the marinated fish in the back, trips I haven’t taken. Estelle and I are alone, slipping on our days like wet stones. I can’t see the taillights of the bride’s car. I am so tired now. On either side, the fields stretch out like dreams I could be having. Beneath an 67 underpass, a deer leaps in front of us, just a few feet from the hood of the car, our vault within a vault. I pull to the shoulder, let go of the bride. Estelle and I stare out the windshield. “Last year, a doctor in Peru tells me grapes are a great cure, for recovery— excellent.” She turns a wide smile on me. “I did not lie. I just didn’t know it was true, you see?” At the edge of the cornfield, a doe watches, pulling us gently back to the zeros of our clocks. Our zeitgeber waits a full minute, then bounds across the road. ...