Free Aerogrammes by Tania James Page A

in sorting through garbage. Cafeteria garbage, classroom garbage: nearly every wastebasket held my interest if Sister Lorraine had passed over it. From the bin beneath her desk, I recovered a comb with broken teeth, a return receipt for wool socks, a cup of wild blueberry yogurt scraped so clean she must have been starving. After I was caught poking through the trash in the faculty bathroom, Sister Lorraine found a litter museum in my locker.
    When my dad came in for the meeting, he could see what drove my studies: Sister Lorraine. Pert, pretty, short-haired, slim-fingered, citrus-smelling Sister Lorraine. I don’t recall her face so well anymore, but it’s her aura I remember, a beatific glow for all those who earned her favor.
    Which I had not. My dad listened to Sister Lorraine’s concerns, stroking the ends of his mustache between thumb and forefinger, something I occasionally mimicked during class, though there was only a single tentative whisker on the corner of my lip. That day I kept my clammy hands in my lap.
    My dad began to report to Sister Lorraine what he had read concerning the field of garbology, explaining that refuse analysis informed a range of fields, from marine biology to corporate espionage. “So the question, Sister, is not ‘What kind ofchild is interested in trash?’ but ‘What does this child hope to find in the refuse?’ ”
    The word “refuse” still murmurs in my mind, a delicate, scholarly term hovering just above my eight-year-old reach. My dad turned to me, as if it were my chance to reveal what I was looking for. I went warm with embarrassment.
    Later, in the car, he confronted me with the obvious. “Nuns can’t get married, you know.”
    “What about in
The Sound of Music
?” I said.
    “She married Captain Von Trapp, not one of the Von Trapp children. That would be a very different movie.”
    I sank down, small in my seat.
    We stalled at the railroad tracks, the signal blinking and clanging while the traffic arm lowered to block our path. “You are a strange bird,” my father observed, studying me as if trying to put a name to my face. “I was, too.”
    I saw the similarity as a good thing, but my dad looked lost in murky thoughts. The signal flashed red in the corner of my eye; I could feel the roar of the oncoming train beneath my feet. He held me in his gaze and then, with a sigh, let go. “Come on, already,” he groaned, just as the train whooshed by.
    Those were the days leading up to his death, and in that time, my father drank no more than usual. He left us no note. That morning, as I hurried out to catch the school bus, I glanced at the closed door of the guest room, but how could I know then of the pills in his pocket, half in the bottle and half down his throat? How could I know he wouldn’t wake up, dress, and step into the shoes he had left by the door, because in his pajamas and robe he was already gone?
    •
    At the engagement party, I was stuck at a table with Kirk’s mother. She glowered at the surroundings—the tiki torches staked around the lawn, the paper lanterns strung along the wooden stairs that led down to an artificial lake, blurred by mist. She had me bring her a gin and tonic from the bar and kept chewing on the straw even when she wasn’t sipping. “Why are you sweating so much?” she demanded of me. “And you keep looking around. Who are you looking for?”
    “Kirk,” I said.
    “Oh.” She rolled her eyes. “Good luck. He’s probably chasing after your mother.”
    And Kirk was wisely avoiding his own. I resolved to corner him in an hour or so, when he’d be tipsy enough to feel magnanimous about my proposal. I kept my notecards in my pocket in case I were to lose my train of thought; between them I’d paper-clipped my dad’s koala postcard, to use as a visual aid.
    My mom had no idea about my plans. She was busy circulating between kitchen and party and wine cellar, steering children away from the tiki torches. At one point, as