The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac by Kris D'Agostino

Author:Kris D'Agostino
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2012-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

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It isn’t in the mailbox. I see it lying in front of the door as I come home from work. It is addressed to Elissa.

She is sitting in the kitchen, making tea, when I bring it to her. She takes the envelope from me and sits looking at her name, scrawled across the front in large, sloppy letters.

“Asshole,” she says.

She tears it open. A sheaf of twenty-dollar bills falls out, along with a handwritten note. She twirls hair between her fingers, spreads the cash out on the table. She reads the note quickly, turns it over, and looks at the back. She reads it again.

“What does it say?” I ask her.

“What do you think it says?”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I’m going to do what I was always going to do,” she says.

“I’m going over there,” I say.

“What for?” She laughs. “To beat him up?”

I think about this for a while.

“I don’t know what I’ll do,” I say finally. “I’ll get Wally and David. We’ll egg his house or something.”

“I’m the one in high school,” she reminds me. “It’s okay. I’ll go. You can drive me.”

She directs me up Route 9, through Ossining, into Croton. We do not listen to music. We turn onto a long uphill street running at a severe angle away from the river. Up and up, I can feel the hatchback struggling to make the ascent. Elissa tells me to take a left. We zigzag through narrow roads lined with small houses sitting practically on top of one another. We pass Croton High and a field where a baseball game is under way. We make our way down a dead-end street.

“It’s here,” she says, pointing. I pull over in front of a white house with a screened porch. The hatchback idles loudly as we sit looking.

“I don’t even know this shithead’s name,” I say.

“Bjorn Copeland,” Elissa says.

“He’s European?”

“He’s not European.”

“All right, well, what’s the plan?”

“I don’t know,” Elissa says. She opens her door and gets out. I follow. I walk behind her, noticing the way her stomach has grown. Her gait has become lopsided. The energetic teenage swagger she usually moves with isn’t as noticeable. Her strides seem older now.

We mount the steps to the house and march through a screen door onto the porch. A strange smell hangs in the air, like faint remnants of a fire. Elissa rings the bell. We wait. She rings again. No one comes. No sound from inside the house, no movement.

“I don’t think anyone’s home,” I say. Elissa takes the envelope from her back pocket and lays it on the ground. She tears the note up, throws the pieces into the air.

“This was stupid,” she says. She turns and together we head back to the car. The sun is setting above us, making its way down past the tree tops. Color is spread across the sky. The wind rustles up through the branches. It feels good on my face.

“Whoa,” Elissa says. She stops in the middle of the walkway.

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