Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates

Author:Joyce Carol Oates
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins

FORKED RIVER ROADSIDE SHRINE, SOUTH JERSEY

KEVIE WE MISS YOU WE LOVE YOU

Kevie may God be with you

SOMETIMES HEARING THIS makes me want to bawl. Sometimes it just pisses me, why they can’t say five fucking words without dragging God into it.

Like God-damn fucking God gives a shit about what happened to me or’d give a shit about what happened to any of them, which they will discover for themselves. Jesus I have to laugh, or bawl, look at those girls’ faces.

Kevie can you hear us? O Kevie we miss you we love you

Kevie?

FIRST THING YOU see from the road is the God-damn cross.

Three-foot-high homemade cross painted Day-Glo white.

And on this cross in red letters where the paint kind of drips down like smeared lipstick:

R

E

S

T

K E V I N O R R

Dec. 4, 1991–May 30, 2009

I

N

P

A

E

C

E

(Maybe paece is spelled wrong? It looks wrong. Shit!)

(Once you’re a decaesed person all kinds of embarrassing shit can be said about you, you can’t defend yourself.)

That shiny stuff wound around the cross is silver foil, looks like, the kind you put on a Christmas tree. And there’s green-plastic vines and snowy-white-plastic flowers shaped like trumpets. At the foot of the cross are (laminated) photos, mostly iPhone pictures Chloe took of me, and pictures of Chloe and me, and me and the guys, and my mom and me, etc. There’s pots of flowers—real flowers—that have got to be watered or they will wither and die, fast. And hanging from the crossbar is one of my sneakers—size twelve, Nike.

Must’ve come to the house and Mom told them to take whatever they wanted from my room. Whatever they needed for the shrine out Forked River Road. By this time she’d have been totally out of it on Xanax or OxyContin or whatever the hell it is, the God-damn shithead doctor prescribes for her she’s not supposed to take when she’s drinking, or not supposed to be drinking when she takes it, but for sure Mom does. Ohhh—what’re you kids taking of Kevie’s and Chloe says Just one of his sneakers, Mrs. Orr.

I’m guessing: soon as the news came of Kevie Orr, dead at Lenape Point they got together, at my house. Hugging one another, crying and wailing, and some of them hysterical, and fainting like Chloe would do, hyperventilating, and my mom looking stunned like she’d been hit over the head with a mallet. No matter she’d been pissed as hell at me, and Chloe wasn’t so fucking happy with me, nor any of the relatives in Mom’s family—once it was known that I was dead, they’d want to remember me in a better way.

Jesus I am glad I was not there for that.

KEVIE—WE LOVE YOU.

Kev-ie? D’you hear us? Can you—see us?

It’s Chloe, and Jill, and Alexa, and—

Oh shit they’re bringing more crap for the shrine. Plastic lilies. Plastic roses, tulips. Plastic daffodils. Little stumpy candles what’re they called—votive candles.

The little cross by the road is getting crowded so they’ve started putting things on a tree trunk a few feet away.

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