Little Sister (5 page)

“That sounds fine,” said Beth firmly. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

“May,” said Uncle James, “do you want to go in and have a minute alone with Martin? The others are going to be arriving any minute.”

“Yes, dear. But perhaps the girls? Francie? Beth?”

“I’ve already been,” said Beth.

Francie gave her head a violent shake.

Mr. Sullivan, who perceived that the crisis had abated, retreated into his office, perhaps to take an antacid and curse the day his father had left him this profitable business. Holding her husband’s arm for support, May took a steadying breath and began the long walk down the room between the chairs to where her brother’s body lay in its bier.

Beth decided to ignore the insolent look in her sister’s eyes. The kid is grieving, she reminded herself. She doesn’t know how to handle this. “How are you, Francie? How is everything?” Beth asked.

The girl looked at her incredulously. “Are you kidding? Do you want to talk about the weather? Or maybe my grades in school?”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Beth in a calm voice. “I was just concerned about you. It’s been such a shock.”

Francie didn’t answer. She was staring stonily ahead. Beth noticed that her slip was showing under the shapeless dress she was wearing, and one of her knee socks was slipping down into her running sneakers. Beth forced herself not to comment on the inappropriate attire.

“I just couldn’t believe it when I heard,” said Beth. “Had he been sick or anything lately?”

“No,” said Francie.

“When did it actually happen? Aunt May wasn’t too clear on that.”

Francie glanced quickly at her and then looked away. “Yesterday afternoon.”

“I hope he didn’t suffer,” Beth said, but it sounded hollow.

“He just had a heart attack and died,” said Francie impatiently. “Dr. Morris said it must have been coming for a long time.”

“Was he home?” Beth asked.

“What difference does it make to you where he was?”

Beth’s temper flared at Francie’s words. “I’m just asking. Believe it or not, he was my father too.”

“He was home,” said Francie.

Beth looked at her. She was about to say that she didn’t really care after all when she noticed a strange uneasiness around the girl’s eyes and mouth that made her curious.

“Were you home when it happened?”

Beth was unprepared for the look of alarm that the girl directed at her. “Who told you that?”

“What’s the matter with you? Nobody told me anything. Aunt May told me he had a heart attack. Period. He did have a heart attack, didn’t he?”

“Of course, he had a heart attack,” Francie shouted. Mr. Sullivan came running out of his office at the sound of Francie’s loud voice. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Beth felt a knot form in her stomach at the sight of her sister’s face, which was mottled now with patches that looked greenish in the foyer’s dim light. The girl’s expression seemed to shift somewhere between rage and fear. Francie turned her eyes away and would not meet her sister’s gaze.

A bell tinkled faintly in the hallway, and they could hear the front door open and then the muted voices of the first mourners to arrive at the wake. Beth hesitated, trying to decide what to say. A couple of people dressed in somber colors, whom Beth did not recognize, entered the foyer and looked uncertainly at the two sisters, who were tensely deadlocked in place.

“Girls,” Mr. Sullivan urged in a hushed voice, “you should probably be going inside now. People are arriving to pay their respects.”

Beth did not want to press it further. It’s probably nothing, she reminded herself. Francie is just distraught. But she could not let go of the nagging sense that for some reason the girl was lying to her.

“Let’s get this over with,” she said, inclining her head toward the double doors. She felt it getting hard to breathe in the room. Francie nodded stonily and preceded Beth through the French doors. Beth wished she could make the time race. All she wanted to do was just get away from here and cheerfully forget them both—her father and Francie—forever.

THE CLICK AND SWISH OF THE WINDSHIELD WIPERS
and Aunt May’s sniffling into her hankie were the only sounds in the car as Uncle James drove toward the Pearsons’ house on Wheelock Street. Sitting with her knees drawn up uncomfortably in front of her, Beth felt like a child, sharing the back seat with her sister and staring out past the gray heads of the grown-ups in the front at the drizzle and the shining streets.

Aunt May cleared her throat. “It’s not supposed to rain tomorrow. I’m sure a lot of people will come.”

“That’s good,” said Beth automatically. Francie appeared oblivious of her aunt’s remark.

“You never know about the weather,” said Uncle James, and the silence descended again.

A lot of people probably will come, Beth thought. The same people who came to the wake: friends of Aunt May’s and loyal members of Uncle James’s parish. She had hardly recognized a soul there tonight.

“Here we are,” said Uncle James as he made a wide turn at the entrance to Wheelock and proceeded slowly down the street.

Beth felt her heart catch in her throat at the sight of the home of her childhood with its dark brown shingles and faded roof. She had not been back in eight years. In a way she felt glad to see it. In another way it made her feel faintly sick.

As the car headlights swept past it and turned into the driveway, Beth noticed a Christmas wreath with a tattered bow, turning brown against the peeling paint on the front door. Uncle James pulled into the driveway and put the car into park.

Aunt May turned around in her seat and looked at Beth and Francie with kindly, puffy eyes. “Are you sure you girls won’t change your minds and come have supper with us? We’d love to have you. It’s no trouble, you know.”

Francie shook her head and opened the car door on her side.

“I’m awfully tired. Aunt May,” said Beth. “The sooner I get to bed, the better. Tomorrow is going to be another long day.”

“I’ve got chicken in the refrigerator all ready,” said May.

“Don’t hound them, dear,” said Uncle James. “They’re big girls.”

“Thanks anyway, really,” said Beth.

“Good night,” said Francie, getting out and slamming the car door behind her.

Aunt May sighed as Francie headed toward the house in the rain, her shoulders hunched up to keep the water from running down her neck, her sneakers squishing on the muddy path.

Beth leaned over and gave her aunt and uncle perfunctory kisses before getting out of the car. “See you tomorrow,” she said.

She turned her collar up against the drizzle and waved as they backed out of the driveway, with Aunt May fussing at her husband to beware of the tree on the other side of the road. Beth shivered from the chill as she stood there. Hoisting her suitcase again, she turned and walked toward the house. Francie had already disappeared inside. At the door she looked back, but she could no longer see her aunt and uncle’s car lights. She turned the doorknob and went into the dark house.

Francie was not in the kitchen when Beth entered, and she could not hear her in the house. Beth put down her bag and looked around. The kitchen was at once familiar and strange. The decorations which her mother had used to cheer the room were still in place but were covered with dust and grease. A little plant pot in a ceramic windmill on the windowsill was still there, but the plant had died long ago. The cupboard doors hung open haphazardly, and the cabinets were sparsely stocked with instant potatoes and cans of stew and spaghetti that just had to be heated to be eaten. Her mother’s prized china was chipped and carelessly stacked, and a dull film seemed to have settled over it. In the corner the rocker still sat, although the cushion on it was ripped and had been patched with a piece of masking tape. Looking at it, Beth remembered that it had been her favorite place to curl up and read when her mother was alive, bustling around the kitchen.

With a sigh Beth passed through the kitchen into the hallway and hung her coat in the closet. Once she had taken her coat off, she suddenly realized how cold it was in the house. Pulling her sweater closer around her and rubbing her arms, Beth went into the living room to check the thermostat. As she crossed the room, she touched a few of the things on the dusty tables. There was a music box the family had always had. And an ashtray from her parents’ honeymoon in Washington, D.C. As she ran her hand along the table behind the sofa, her fingers touched her father’s glasses. They were lying there, open, on the table, and she suddenly had a vivid image of him, absorbed in a book, the corners of his mouth lowered, his eyes narrowed behind the lenses, as if the author were trying to deceive him. She drew her fingers back quickly as if they had been burned.

Briskly she crossed the room and pushed up the temperature on the thermostat. The heat kicked on with a rumble.

“You’d better turn that down,” said a voice behind her.

Beth started and turned around. She could see the outline of her sister’s form crouched on the darkened staircase, watching her.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Beth snapped. “It’s freezing in here.”

“Too bad,” said Francie. “The oil’s low. We didn’t pay the guy last month, so he didn’t deliver.”

“I’ll pay them,” said Beth evenly. “They can deliver it tomorrow.”

“Not on Saturday they won’t,” said Francie. “Not till next week.”

“Great,” Beth muttered.

“What?” asked Francie suspiciously.

“Never mind,” said Beth as she went back and lowered the temperature. She heard Francie stomping up the stairs and then the sound of a door slamming on the second floor.

Beth went and got her suitcase and then climbed the stairs herself. The wind and rain outside were buffeting the house, and she felt as if every draft were whistling through the walls and cutting into her. /’// get pneumonia from this damn trip, she thought.

The door to Francie’s room was closed, and Beth passed right by it. She went into her old room and put her suitcase down on the bare floor. Then she sat down on the edge of the sagging bed and pulled off her black leather boots. She rubbed her feet and looked around her old room. It made a dreary contrast with her cozy bedroom at home. She thought wistfully of the cheery chintzes that covered her stuffed chairs, the soft light of the reading lamp by her bed, and, most of all, Mike, coming through the doorway, toweling his hair after a shower. She wished she could talk to him, although she knew he was at the hospital tonight.

Beth remembered that she had not taken much with her when she left this house, but as she glanced around, it seemed to her that no one had even set foot in her room since that day she had walked out and slammed the door behind her. Her books had gathered dust in the bookcase, and the eyelet skirt on her preteen-size dressing table was gray and dingy. The glossy photos of TV stars she had thumb-tacked to her walls were curled up at the bottom so that you couldn’t see their faces below their noses. A picture of her mother in a silver frame smiled out at her from the night table by her bed. Next to it was a blue china vase with a silk rose in it, which she had won in a raffle at the church fair.

Across the room the window, hung with limp voile curtains, still had in it the same diagonal crack that had been there when she’d left.

“Home sweet home,” Beth murmured aloud. Then she shrugged and unzipped her bag. She slipped into a pair of running shoes and tied them up. They didn’t look right with her good slacks, but she thought ruefully, Who’s going to see me here? Besides, it did not take long to fall back into the local mentality, which was comfort over style every time.

She opened the closet door and saw that there were a few wire hangers, along with an assortment of clothes from when she’d been a teenager. Despite her weariness, she decided to unpack right away. She hadn’t brought that much anyway. She quickly placed her folded things into the musty-smelling drawers of the dresser, and then she lifted out the black dress she had brought for the funeral, shook it out, and looked at it critically. It had gotten pretty wrinkled from the trip. The last thing she felt like doing at that moment was ironing, but she knew that there would not be much time in the morning. I’d better do it, she thought. If they even have an iron.

The black dress folded over her arm, Beth walked down the hall and knocked on the door to Francie’s room. There was no answer.

“Francie,” said Beth impatiently.

“It’s open,” came a voice from inside.

Beth opened the door and leaned in, holding the doorknob. Francie was lying on her bed, her arms folded across her chest, staring at the opposite wall. Her blondish hair was all bunched up and matted on the pillow behind her head, and her glasses had slipped down off the bridge of her nose. She did not glance at Beth or make any move to get up when Beth came in.

“Sorry to bother you,” said Beth. “I’ve got this dress to wear to the funeral tomorrow, and I need to iron it. Do you know where the iron is?”

“Under the sink,” said Francie. “I don’t know if it still works.”

Beth glanced around the girl’s room. Clothes were heaped on the chair and in the comer by the closet. “Have you got something to wear tomorrow?” she said.

“What do you mean?” Francie asked defensively, giving her sister a sidelong glance.

“Nothing,” said Beth. “I thought since we’re going to have the iron out, you might want to press whatever it is you’re wearing. That’s all.”

Francie sat up on the bed, grasping the edge for a minute as if she were dizzy. Then she got up and went over to the chair that was piled with clothes. She rummaged through the dirty dungarees and pilled sweaters until she dislodged what appeared to be a large sweatshirt.

“I’m wearing this,” she said. “It’s my sweatshirt dress.”

“You’re supposed to wear black,” Beth said stiffly.

Francie continued to gaze at the rumpled garment in her hands. “He made it for me,” said Francie.

“Who?”

“Daddy.”

Beth examined the shabby dress incredulously. The top was a blue sweatshirt with the neck cut out and the sleeves cut to cover about the middle of the forearm. The skirt, which was sewn to the top, had a drawstring waist and was cut along the bottom instead of being actually hemmed.