As Close as Sisters (13 page)

I was licking strawberry jam off the butter knife when Fritz came down the stairs and out onto the deck. He stopped at the top of the steps to the beach and looked at me. “It’s okay, boy,” I said. “Go ahead.”

He trotted down the stairs. He had a potty spot on one side of the house that Janine had made for him. He was the best behaved dog I’d ever seen. I knew he’d run down, do his business, and come right back. Sure enough, three minutes later, he was loping back up the steps.

Aurora stumbled onto the deck in jeans that looked like they’d been slept in and the bikini top she’d been wearing the day before. “Coffee,” she groaned.

Lilly got up. “Coming up.” She took the tray and headed for the kitchen.

Aurora walked to the rail and gazed out. “It’s bright out here. Damn it’s bright out.”

I grabbed a pair of my drugstore sunglasses off the table. “Here.” She turned, and I tossed them to her.

She caught them and slid them on. “Christ on a crutch. Who the hell can see out of these things?”

“Sorry. Left my Guccis in the car. You two stay up all night?”

She walked over to her white Adirondack chair, sat down, and slumped back. “Something like that.”

I shook my head. “Drinking having fun? Or drinking having a breakdown?” She knew I was talking about Janine.

“A little of both.” She tipped her head back and rested it on the chair.

I looked down at her bare abdomen. She had a kick-ass body. Amazing abs. I didn’t understand how that was possible, the way she abused her body. She didn’t eat enough. She drank way too much. I liked to think she’d left her drug days well behind, but I knew for a fact that she still smoked a joint once in a while.

“So what’s up with her?” I asked, lowering my voice. If Janine let Fritz out of her room, she couldn’t be far behind.

“You know, the usual.” Aurora kept her head back. I imagined her eyes were closed behind the dark glasses.

“Anything I can do?” I asked.

“If I could turn back time . . .” she sang. On key.

I chimed in, not on key, “If I could find a way.”

“What? We’re singing Cher? Really, you guys?” Janine walked out onto the deck. She was in her running clothes, a bottle of water in her hand. She looked tired, but not hungover like Aurora.

“You don’t like Cher?” I asked.

Aurora was still thrown back in her chair, glasses on, staring at the sky or the insides of her eyelids. “Who doesn’t like
Cher?
”

“Half-breed . . .” Lilly sang, joining us on the deck. “How I learned to hate the word . . .” She did a little dance like she was an Indian maiden circling a campfire, and we all laughed.

Growing up, Lilly had struggled with her parentage. Her mother’s family had never accepted her father because he was a black man, and her father’s family had never accepted her because of her Japanese
peasant
stock.

“You guys are nuts. I’m going for a run.” Janine walked over to Aurora and nudged her with the toe of her running shoe. “You okay?”

“Great,” Aurora said, not moving a muscle.

“Maybe cut back on your gin intake,” she suggested, walking toward the steps. She ran on the beach in the morning. Every morning.

“Maybe cut back on the sass,” Aurora countered.

I laughed and sat back in my chair, thinking I was the luckiest woman on earth.

 

“How was your run?” I asked Janine, holding up my cell phone, watching her on the screen.

She was stretched out on a striped towel: red sports bra and a pair of bleached-out board shorts. We were all on the beach: Lilly and I in chairs. Janine and Aurora on towels. Aurora, in a tiny lime green bikini, lay on her stomach, sound asleep, I assumed.

“You know, Cancer Girl, you’re plucking my last nerve with that video camera. Put it away,” Janine ordered, waving her hand at me, blocking the screen.

“I can’t. I’m the recorder. I have to record what’s going on. So what’s going on, Janine? How’s Chris?”

Lilly lowered the book she was reading:
Ina May’s Guide to Breastfeeding
. “Cancer Girl. Ouch. I think she means business, McKenzie.” She steered my phone until I was looking at her face. “So how is Chris, Janine?” she sang, tilting her head side to side.

I filled the frame with Janine’s face. I’d found the zoom on the app this morning.

“Chris is fine.” She adjusted her mirrored sunglasses. “What are you two? Fourteen?”

“You haven’t said a word about her. Is she cute? Smart? Blond or brunette?”

“Blond.”

“You always did like blondes,” said Lilly.

Janine raised her hand. “Could you shut that thing off? I’m serious.”

I sighed and hit the red button. “There.”

“It’s off?”

“It’s off.” I dropped the phone into my lap. I was wearing a cotton cardigan over my bathing suit. When I got warm, I’d take it off. A few minutes later, it would go back on again.

“We’re just curious, that’s all,” Lilly said. “We’ve been worried about you.”

“You don’t have to worry about me.” Janine sat up. Her abs were as well defined as Aurora’s. Maybe more defined. She worked at them. Hard. She ran, she went to the gym, and she ate well.

“We want you to be happy,” I said.

She made a face like that was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. “When have you ever known me to be happy?” she asked.
“Ever?”

“You know what I mean,” I said gently.

She lay back on the towel with a groan. “Chris is good. I . . . I just don’t know where it’s going. That’s why I haven’t said much.”

“Do you really like her?”

She didn’t answer.

I looked at Lilly. She looked at me.

“That a yes?”

“Could we talk about something else, like maybe Lilly’s vagina again?” Earlier in the day, much to Janine’s distress, we’d talked about Lilly’s labor and delivery. Extensively. Aurora had gone for a swim, just to get out of trying to even pretend to be interested.

“No. We can’t talk about something else. We’re talking about you and your new relationship.”

Janine rested her arm across her forehead. “It’s too soon to know what’s going on.”

“We think you should invite her for dinner,” I said.

“I’ll make something nice. A pork roast,” Lilly said. “Does she like pork, Janine?”

“I don’t know if Chris likes pork roast.”

“Maybe you need a nap, missy. You’re cranky.” Lilly opened her book again.

Everyone was quiet. I watched a little girl of four or five, in a pink polka-dot bathing suit, run to the water’s edge with a plastic bucket. She scooped water and ran back onto the beach where another girl, a little younger, waited. The girl in the polka dots poured the water into the sand to the delight of the little one. They both squealed with laughter, and I smiled. I remembered my girls playing together, hauling buckets of water back and forth. I wish I had appreciated those times more than I did. I knew, at the time, that they were good times. I laughed with them. I took pictures of them. But now that they were older, I longed for those days again. For that laughter that was so pure, so innocent.

“I really like Chris,” Janine said.

I glanced at Lilly, who never looked up from her book. “So invite her for dinner. So we can get to know her,” she said.

Janine still had her face covered. “I can’t imagine anything more awkward.”

“Or you could invite her for fireworks tonight,” I suggested. “That might work. No pork roast. It’ll be dark so we won’t see her and she won’t hear anything Lilly says because the fireworks will be too loud.”

Janine surprised me then. With laughter.

15

Lilly

“S
he asleep?” I asked Janine as she walked into the laundry room carrying a mesh bag of dirty clothes.

McKenzie had decided to take a nap before the festivities began. We planned to grill burgers. I’d made potato salad and had the fixings for baked beans. It would be just us for dinner. Mia and Maura weren’t coming until eight, in time to make s’mores on the grill before the fireworks. No fire on the beach for us tonight. The city didn’t grant open fire permits on Independence Day. Too many nuts on the beach already, armed with six packs of Bud Light and illegal pyrotechnics.

“Sound asleep.” Janine dropped the bag onto the floor on top of a pair of Aurora’s flip-flops. “I’ll do that.”

I was perfectly capable of moving the wet beach towels from the washing machine to the dryer. I was pregnant, not a quadriplegic, but I stepped back. I understood the need to be useful. I’d spent my whole life trying to fulfill the needs of others, striving somehow to fulfill myself in my usefulness.

“She seems better today, don’t you think?” I asked. “I was worried about her the other night when the girls were here. She looked really . . . sick.”

Janine eyed me as she tossed a Green Turtle Pub towel into the dryer. “She
is
sick, Lilly.”

I reached above the open dryer to the shelf lined with laundry detergent, bleach, fabric softener, and assorted items, some that didn’t belong there. I had to stand on my tiptoes, and when I did, my baby belly pressed against the cool metal of the dryer. I grabbed a box of dryer sheets. Spotting a second, I pulled that box down, too. “She’s better today. Her color’s good, and she ate a whole sandwich at lunch. Most of one,” I amended.

“She is better today than she was yesterday, but that’s the way cancer works.” Janine pulled a blue towel out of the washer. “You have good days and bad. But she’s going to have fewer good days. You get that, don’t you? It’s the progression of the disease.”

“You’re such a cynic.” I pulled fabric softener sheets out of the smaller box that was crushed and stacked them on top of the dryer, making a neat pile.

“I’m a pragmatist.” She waited for me to step back so she could throw the towel into the dryer. “And the reality, Susie, is that McKenzie has terminal cancer and she’s going to die.”

Susie.
Susie Sunshine. That’s what she called me sometimes. It wasn’t meant as a compliment. She thought I was overly optimistic. Excessively positive. I’d once looked up the name but hadn’t been able to find, for sure, the origin of it. As best as I could figure out, it came from a 1930s British film based on a book written by a Hungarian named István Szomaházy.

“Let me put the rest of these in,” she said.

I stepped back so she could throw the last two towels into the dryer. I closed the door, started it, and returned to my dryer sheet task.

Janine picked up her laundry bag.

I knew she was going to throw the whole thing into the washing machine. Years ago, I’d given up trying to teach her how to separate her delicates from her lights and darks. She didn’t really have delicates, just sports bras and cotton Fruit of the Looms, so it didn’t really matter, I supposed.

“I’m thinking about selling this place,” she said without looking at me.

I concentrated on the dryer sheets, stacking them neatly.

“I don’t know if I can come back here anymore. Not after she’s dead.”

Realizing that I’d forgotten to put a sheet in the dryer with the towels, I opened the door and tossed one in. “I know. I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

Janine looked at me. “So you think I
should
sell it?”

“I thought you should have sold it the minute your mom deeded it to you. I think it’s crazy that we come back here, year after year. A little perverted even. You know?” I met her gaze. “Like we, on some level, want to torture ourselves with the pain. What kind of friends are we to do this to you, year after year?”

“You know I needed to be here. Which makes you the best kind of friends because you’ve been willing to come here with me and watch me torture myself.” She gave a little laugh that was without humor. Her just-washed hair was wispy around her face and so flattering. She was a pretty girl, our Janine. Prettier now than she had been in her twenties.

“You have to do what’s right for you, Janine. We can’t tell you what that is.”

She stared into the washing machine. “I’m just thinking it might be for the best, you know? Because . . . I don’t know what we’re going to be when McKenzie dies.”

I looked at her. “What we’re going to
be?
”

“The three of us.” She glanced at me, then quickly away. “You
know
we can’t be the same, Lilly. Not with her gone.”

“But we’ll still be best friends,” I said, not liking the way she had said that. As if she didn’t think we would be. “We’ll still love each other and be there for each other. We have to. For McKenzie.”

“Right.” She nodded. “Anyway. The house.”

“The house,” I repeated. “Maybe you’re right. We’re in our forties. Things change. We’ve changed. Maybe it’s finally time.”

“Chris says the same thing.”

I shut the door and hit start. The dryer buzzed, then hummed as it began to tumble again. “Maybe she’s right. She’s a psychologist, isn’t she?” I felt better with this line of conversation. It had never occurred to me that Janine would think we couldn’t still be friends . . . or at least wouldn’t be the same to each other without McKenzie. That just didn’t make sense.

The new girlfriend was definitely a safer conversation. I kept my tone casual, trying not to sound as interested as I was. If McKenzie wasn’t going to get the dirt, I was going to have to get it myself.

“A forensic psychologist.”

I only vaguely knew what that meant. I’d Google it later on my iPad. I slid the neat pile of fabric softener sheets into the bigger box and flipped the little box over. Seeing it couldn’t be recycled, I tossed it in the garbage can under the utility sink. “I’d like to meet her.”

“I know.”

I pressed my lips together, thinking I needed to go find a tube of lip balm. My lips were dry. Hopefully not sunburned. “If you sold it . . . would we still come to the beach every summer? You, me, and Aurora? Rent a house maybe? I can’t imagine raising a child and not bringing him or her to Albany Beach.”

Janine opened her laundry bag and pulled out running shorts, then a T-shirt. “We could do that.”

“But we won’t, will we?” I tried to control my emotions. Janine hated it when I cried. I know how much she hates it when I cry.

“I don’t know, Lilly.” She dropped the clothes into the washing machine and reached into the bag again. “I can’t imagine what life is going to be without her.” She pulled her hand from the bag and pressed the heel to her forehead. Hard. “I try to think about what it will be, but I can’t see it.” She looked at me, eye to eye. I’m only a little shorter than she is. “I can’t imagine anything after she’s gone.” Her brow creased, and she squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s like . . . I wonder if I’ll just disappear when she does. You know?” She opened her eyes. “Crazy?”

The crazy thing was that I
did
know what she meant. McKenzie was so much a part of me, of us, that I’d contemplated the same thought. Was it like on
Star Trek: The Next Generation
? (Matt loved
Star Trek
.) Would we just cease to exist when McKenzie was gone? Or would we die slowly, one cell at a time? Which wasn’t crazy, because that’s kind of true, isn’t it? We’re born dying?

“Have you talked to Aurora? What does she think?”

Janine took a pair of socks, balled together from the bag, and tossed them into the washing machine. Navy shorts and T-shirt, a forest green T-shirt, and white no-show socks. I wondered if the socks would come out green or blue.

“I haven’t broached the subject.”

I reached up over the dryer to take a stray liquid fabric softener lid from the shelf. There was another behind it. Two blue bottles of softener. Both already with lids. I threw the extra lids in the trash. “I don’t know what she’ll say. I can see her going either way. Hell no, we’re not selling the place. We’re coming back next year and the year after that. Or”—I rubbed my belly thoughtfully—“hell no, we’re never coming back.”

Janine smiled and reached into the bag again. “Right.” She pulled out a lacy demi-cup pink bra.

I glanced at the bra. “Bringing a little something of Chris’s with you to remind you of her?” I asked.

She threw the bra up on the dryer. “No.”

I picked up the bra. “Yours?”

She snatched it out of my hand and held it over the washtub.

“Don’t you dare.” I snatched it back. “It’s too pretty to ruin with those nasty running clothes. Whoever’s it is. It goes in a lingerie bag.” I pulled a small white mesh bag from the shelf and tucked the bra inside. “Got matching panties?”

I was just kidding, but Janine proceeded to produce a pair of lace thong undies.

I laughed and held open the lingerie bag for her. She dropped them in.

“We should talk to Aurora about the house,” I said.

She nodded, adding board shorts and a black wifebeater to the washer. I hated it when Janine wore those things. They were so ugly, so . . . stereotypical.

“I guess we need to talk to Mack, too,” she mused, tossing the laundry bag on the dryer.

“You think?” I zipped up the lingerie bag. “I’ll wash these with my things tomorrow,” I told her.

She added too much detergent to the washer and closed the lid.

“Did you go out last night?” I asked her.

She punched buttons on the washing machine.

“I just wondered if you went out to meet Chris or something. You know you can bring her here. No one’s going to be, like, horrified or anything, if your girlfriend spends the night. You guys can even have my room. I can sleep in yours. If you want two beds,” I added.

She pushed the start button, and I heard water pour in.

“Last night I heard a car start in the driveway. Two thirtyish. Later, I got up to check on McKenzie and get a glass of water in the kitchen. When I looked out the window, I saw that your Jeep was gone.”

The back door opened, and Aurora walked in, clad in her old red bathing suit, still glistening with water. She’d rinsed off in the shower under the house. She was still wearing her ugly swim cap.

“It’s not like you have to sneak around with us. We’re big girls.”

“Where you sneaking to?” Aurora asked Janine. She walked past us, into the kitchen, leaving wet footprints behind.

“Mom caught me sneaking out last night,” Janine said.

Aurora looked at Janine. “You tell her about Maura?”

I grabbed the mop from the corner of the laundry room and followed Aurora into the kitchen, mopping behind her. “What about Maura?” I asked, keeping my voice low, just in case McKenzie woke. The rest of the house was quiet, though. All I could hear was the
click-click
of the ceiling fan in the living room.

“I thought we weren’t going to say anything.” Janine followed us.

“I said we didn’t need to tell
McKenzie
.” Aurora went to the kitchen sink. She could plainly see that she was leaving wet footprints on the hardwood. And see me mopping up behind her. She didn’t care.

“I was going to tell Lilly,” Aurora said. “You thought we weren’t going to tell Lilly?”

Janine brought her finger to her lips and cut her eyes in the direction of the front of the house. “She’s asleep.”

Aurora grabbed a glass from the drain board, flipped on the faucet, and watched it fill.

“What?” I mopped up the last footprint, directly behind Aurora. “What’s going on with Maura?” I heard the sound of the downstairs bedroom door open, and I glanced that way. All of us looked that way.

McKenzie walked into the kitchen. “Hey, guys.” There was still a groggy sound to her voice. “What’s going on?”

“I’m going to grab a shower.” As Aurora walked past McKenzie, she leaned over and brushed a quick kiss across her cheek.

I followed Aurora, wiping up four more footprints, then surrendering. Her feet were almost dry.

“Going to get more propane.” Janine hooked her thumb in the direction of the back deck. “Fritz! Come, boy.”

I heard the dog rise in the other room and his foot pads as he bounded for the kitchen.

“How about a nice glass of iced tea?” I asked McKenzie. “You can keep me company while I make the baked beans.”

She glanced at Aurora, who was already out of the kitchen. Then at Janine, in the doorway to the laundry room, then me, standing there with my mop. “What’s going on?” she asked, looking concerned.

“I was trying to get some good dirt on Chris, but Janine’s not putting out.”

“Oh, I bet she’s putting out,” Aurora hollered from the living room.

Everyone laughed, and I walked toward the laundry room with the mop. I cut my eyes at Janine. Whatever was going on with Maura, they were going to have to tell me. I wasn’t going to be left out.