wish you were here
by Nikki Volpicelli
I'm not mad. Really. It's just been strange since you left. Tropically strange. I get why you did—our house was ugly and that's part of the reason you wanted out. I don't claim to know all the reasons, just that it was usually smoke-filled and mom never stopped ashing in that lumpy, orange Hawaii ashtray long enough to clean. That if you were to take any of the pictures of us off the walls there'd probably be a bright white space, but she never did. She never even swapped out our 5th and 6th grade school photos. I know you're eighteen, you can do what you want now and this was so clearly what you wanted, to leave. Here. Us. To find something else, whatever the opposite of ugly turns out to be.
Which is why I need to tell you what happened the morning after you left and how I’ve started counting the days on coconut shells. There are 21, by the way. I put them on your bedspread and they almost reach the lips of the J.T.T. poster hanging over your headboard. They fall from the palm trees in our kitchen, or what was our kitchen. The palms have broken through the ceiling letting in the sun. They produce coconuts out the wazoo. You wouldn't believe the antioxidants—the milk, meat, oil have so many uses, beauty and otherwise. They practically melt away belly fat. Then there’s the fact that the black and white sand, soft under the feet, pushed our dingy walls over. We live outside now, with the wind and the sea and the fragrant flowers. We never get bug bites.
I know, it’s a lot. Maybe you don’t believe me. Remember when we were kids at the kitchen table, how we’d ash our Ore Ida french fries on paper plates covered in ketchup? How I ripped the rippled edge off my plate and wrapped it around my wrist just like the bangles mom wore, and how I told you mine was made of solid gold, too, and you said, no, you’re lying. And I said, look closer, closer, see it sparkle—and finally convinced you? I was pretending then, but trust me when I say that I wouldn’t make this up. I couldn’t make this up. It all started with the ashtray, how it shattered when you threw it at mom the night you left. Broke some crap spell we lived under all these years. So I guess, it all started with you.
We don’t have to talk about that night. It’s ancient history if you want it to be. We can forget it ever happened, which will be easier than ever if you come home and see the paradise you left. It’s nothing like before. The next morning, the paper plates and bills and mail and laundry and everything else we couldn’t stand picking up were just—poof—transformed. The dirty Tupperware towers under the microwave turned to sea glass. The phone is a peach-colored conch with only the ocean on the other line. There are clamshells, like the ones our Polly Pockets came in. A hammock where the kitchen table once was. And mom, no joke, quit smoking. It turns out she just needed something to do with her hands. She woke up that morning next to a beautiful mahogany ukulele and was able to eke out “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” like it always lived inside her, just waiting to come out. These days, she sits in that hammock and practices her chords. She’s working on Elvis now. She’d write but you know how she is on the computer, all acrylic fingernails, like tiny guitar picks.
Like I said, I’m not mad. I don’t blame you for wanting to escape our boring, ugly, lame, nothing-ever-changes smoked-up house. To see what else is out there.. I get it all all all. But I had to write, to ask if you knew the ashtray carried some kind of magic and if you threw it on purpose, like a genie’s bottle? If you did this for us. If you had to leave for it to actually come true? If so, I should thank you. Because I haven’t even gotten to the best part. Do you remember that navy polka-dot bikini we circled in the J. Crew catalog? You remember. That morning, there it was, laid out between a skittering crab and one last, lonely, leftover cigarette butt. It fits sooo well, just like it did on the model.
It sucks because we’ve never been better. Mom and I. As I’m writing, there are bright red-tailed birds nesting above the computer desk. A parrot in the corner chants, “You’ve Got Mail.” You get used to it. Yesterday, I watched mom strum the same three chords over and over, all absentmindedly, gazing at the turquoise waves that roll over our old dirt driveway. I figured it couldn’t hurt to write. To tell you everything has changed and there are plenty of coconuts and we can share the bikini, I don’t mind. To see if maybe all you needed was a little vacation. If so, you can come home now. It’s paradise. It’s been three weeks. 21 days. I’ve got the coconuts to prove it.
Nikki Volpicelli is a writer with work in XRAY, Rejection Letters, Entropy, and Vice. She writes about wants, never needs, and growing up in the early 2000s. She teaches at Temple University and is earning her MFA in creative writing at Bennington College. She’s also a harm reduction outreach volunteer in Philly. You can find her on Twitter.