Other Shepards (17 page)

“Ever since you were a little girl, you’ve been sensitive to the stories and memories of Elizabeth. Always asking us about her, what was she like, what kind of daughter, sister, student was she? When you created this older sister figure, even calling her Annie, just a variation of Ann, Elizabeth’s confirmation name, we thought—”

“That I invented Annie? Why would I?”

I see in Dad’s face that he has asked himself this same question. “We thought you girls needed Annie. To take her away from you didn’t seem right.”

The gentleness of his tone, his obvious yearning for peace between us, is mesmerizing. My fingers are warm inside the prayer clasp of his hands, and I decide not to upset him any more with my insistence of the truth. Because who is to say which version of our story is the one to believe?

I discuss Annie with Geneva, but these talks aren’t very satisfying. “I wish other people had known her, had seen her,” I mention. “There isn’t any evidence that she came. Everything we used to paint the kitchen was right here all along.”

We have found the paints and brushes, rags and mixers all stacked neatly in the cellar. The art books are in the den, wedged between a giant atlas and a stack of
Life
magazines in a dark corner of the back bookshelf. Their spines pop when we reopen their covers, and their pages are limp with mildew.

“It doesn’t matter,” Geneva tells me. “Why do you have to find the scientific proof of everything?”

Except that my sister is looking for proof, too, not of Annie but of change. I think Geneva genuinely believed that our trip to Saint Germaine would open the doors to a new and improved Shepard family. For a while, she was as watchful as a gull over our activities, waiting for the crumbs to drop from our rituals. Eventually she began to squawk with conversational bids such as, “We should grill hot dogs on the roof sometime. Hot dogs are my favorite food,” or, “Sophie’s parents are taking all their kids white-water rafting this summer. I think we should do stuff like that.”

“Really, Geneva,” Dad would remark mildly. “You seem quite energetic tonight.”

Being older, I know better. I know the parents will not take down the portraits of the other Shepards any more than they will roll up the bottoms of their pants and grill hot dogs on our roof. They will continue to meet in the twilight kingdom of their dining room, and their grief is a feast of pain I cannot touch. But now I know that I will not always sit at their table. Life has to keep going.

We end up doing little things to bring Annie back into our home. We leave the kitchen window open all the time, now that the weather is warmer. We have been to MoMA, at first just to look at
Starry Night
, but lately we have ventured off to the photography and film exhibits.

Some days, after school, we brew up a pot of coffee, although we have never been able to duplicate Annie’s special blend, and we drink it in our clumsy, ugly, gorgeous birds of paradise kitchen. It has become the center of our home, our favorite place to talk or do homework, and sometimes to open mail from the Hubbards, who are back in Seattle now and often send us packages or postcards. We are probably going to visit Seattle next summer, just Geneva and me. Dr. Bushnell has encouraged it.

“I’m glad we have our kitchen,” I say. “It’s a safe place, kind of a protection. Like Saint Jude.”

“How can Saint Jude be protection?” Geneva scoffs as she carefully erases a line on the pastel she is working on. Not long after our trip, the parents enrolled Geneva in an after-school art program at The New School, and since then she has been preoccupied with her plastic one-snap portfolio, her watercolor sets and brushes, and her criticisms of other students in her class. “He’s the saint of hopeless cases.”

I flush. “Nuh-uh. Louis told me he’s the saint of travel.”

“Believe what you want, but we just finished our chapter on saints in religion class, so I should know.”

“Well, all I know is he helped us,” I say. “You can’t take that away from him.”

“You don’t have to get on the defensive just because Litterbug mixed up his saints,” Geneva says. “When I get old enough to like a guy, I’m going to make sure he’s a smart one.”

Saint Jude stays under my pillow, though. When I think about it later, it doesn’t seem like such a mix-up, and I can’t fault myself for believing in the things that comfort me.

With Geneva in art class, my after-school time is free to watch Louis play softball or to hang out with him at the Chatterbox Diner. Louis and I introduced Kathlyn to Louis’s friend Paul Santillo, and after some begging, the parents have allowed me to see Louis officially on weekend double dates with Kathlyn and Paul, as long as I tell them exactly where I’m going and am home by ten. As for my afternoons spent at the Chatterbox or the Bishop Brown sports court, I figure part of my time spent with Louis ought to remain secret.

“Some things are more important than rules,” I tell him.

“Whatever you say, Sarge,” he answers. “You’re the boss.” Which is becoming especially true these days. After one polite but firm conversation, Dad backed off the science internship, and Mom never mentions the name Aaron Hill in a context of his being at all datable. It isn’t until Brett and Carla come over for dinner later that spring, though, that the parents acknowledge what I have realized for a while.

“The older she gets, the more Holland reminds me of Elizabeth,” Brett says after the table is cleared and Geneva and I are excused. His voice is low, but still audible from where I am, in the kitchen.

“Yes, she has something of Elizabeth’s spirit,” Mom agrees.

If I do, it was given to me at a time when I needed an older sister most, and holding onto her spirit is as close as I can come to safeguarding real memories of the sister I used to have. But it’s enough for me.

If I want other stories, I go to Pia, who loves to talk about her high school days. Plus, she reads my fortune, a different one each time, and if I don’t bring Geneva, she includes lots of good, Ick details about my love life. Pia also tells me about Elizabeth’s boyfriend.

“Such a doll,” she remembers. “William Jacowski, but we all called him Jack. Four grades under me, but even us seniors thought he was cute. And now he’s an actor, I heard, mostly in television commercials. Actually, I thought I saw him in a heartburn ad. Might not have been him, though. I’m not good with faces.”

I can’t help occasionally tempting myself, clicking through channels, hoping to see his commercial, and one afternoon after school I search out his pictures in Kevin’s senior year Bishop Brown yearbook. There he is, a smear of dark and light in the third row on the basketball team, there again in a crowded cafeteria shot, and again on page seventy-two, my favorite, above the caption
WILLIAM JACOWSKI ADDS A TOUCH OF CLASS TO BBHS’S NINTH GRADE VALENTINE’S DAY SEMIFORMAL.
He wears a painted tuxedo T-shirt and holds out his plastic champagne glass in a toast to the photographer. I know Elizabeth is next to him; although she stands just outside the frame, I can almost see her standing beside him in her tap shoes and chenille-covered tutu.

I replace the yearbook in its place with all the others in the den, then I walk into the kitchen, where I retrieve a small paring knife from one of the drawers.

“You got a phone call on call waiting, but I was on with Sophie,” Geneva says. She is seated at the banquette, sketching a still life from a bowl of grapes and apples arranged in front of her. “It was Litterbug. He said to call back.”

“Okay.”

“And I set the table without you.”

“Thanks, Neeve.”

“Do you like my apples?”

“Your grapes are better.” I plant a big noisy kiss on her cheek.

“Yuck,” she says.

I walk up the stairs to the Korean chest room, where I sit at Elizabeth’s desk and trace over the letters
E. S. + W. J.
with my fingernail. I slide the knife from my pocket and carve my own set of initials,
H. S. + L. L.
, next to hers. My cut is fresher, but the two hearts could be twins, beating together inside the piney wood. I swipe the lacy crumbles of blue-painted wood chips to the floor and slip the knife back in my pocket. The fading sun filters through the curtains, and for the first time I think the cream-of-tomato rug and asparagus wallpaper do not look so bad. Maybe I will have a sleep-over here sometime. It might be kind of fun.

Faintly, very faintly, I think I catch a scent through the room of vanilla nutmeg coffee.

Then I get up to call Louis.

I was born in 1970 in my mother’s hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was the oldest of three children, and spent my early childhood as a “military brat,” moving between bases in North Carolina, California, Panama, and Rhode Island. I returned to Pennsylvania for high school, and then attended college at the University of Pennsylvania. After earning a bachelor of arts and sciences degree in 1993, I eagerly answered a “help wanted” ad in the
New York Times
and an “apartment rentals” ad in the
Village Voice
. That same week, I secured both my first job and my first apartment. I began working for Macmillan Children’s Books as an editorial assistant; living two blocks away from the office ensured that I didn’t get lost on my commute.

While balancing days working in the editorial department with nights writing fiction, I discovered my abiding love of New York City, and knew that I would want to live there for the long haul. At Macmillan, and later Hyperion Books for Children, I read old favorites and new favorite fiction for younger readers, and in doing so rediscovered classic stories that had been so riveting in my youth. I was particularly enthralled to connect with Robert Cormier, an author whose work I idolized when I was a child—years later, I got to spend a day with him at Simmons College. It wasn’t long before I completed my first novel,
Rainy Season
(1996), which was accepted by Houghton Mifflin & Co. A semi-autobiographical account of family life on an army base in Panama, the book was recommended by
Publishers Weekly
as a “Flying Start” notable debut. My second book,
Split Just Right
(1997), told the story of a bohemian single mother raising her daughter. My third book,
Sons of Liberty
, a drama set in New England that addressed child abuse, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1997. I followed this novel with a contemporary supernatural story,
The Other Shepards
(1998), and then
Dive
(1999), a novel that grappled with the real-life unexpected death of my stepbrother, Jason.

Turning to more lighthearted fare, I created a middle-grade series, Witch Twins, about identical twins living in Philadelphia (based on my nieces) who work to become “five-star” witches—with some help from their eccentric, spell-casting grandmother. The four-book series includes
Witch Twins
,
Witch Twins at Camp Bliss
,
Witch Twins and Melody Malady
, and
Witch Twins and the Ghost of Glenn Bly
. I also completed
Amandine
(2001), a novel loosely based on Lillian Hellman’s chilling play
The Children’s Hour
. Themes of friendship, deceit, and betrayal surfaced again in my next book,
Overnight
(2003), about a sleepover that goes horribly wrong.

In
Hannah, Divided
(2002), I tried my hand at historical fiction, crafting a story of a young math prodigy living in 1930s rural Pennsylvania, who then wins a scholarship to study in Philadelphia. In 2010, I returned to the genre with
Picture the Dead
, collaborating with my friend Lisa Brown, an author and illustrator, on an illustrated novel about Spiritualist photographers in the Civil War era.

In 2005, I received another National Book Award nomination for
Where I Want to Be
, a family-centered psychological drama with paranormal elements. The following year, I published a light, young adult romance titled
My Almost Epic Summer
. I also launched another middle grade series; this one, Vampire Island Stories, is about a family of vegan vampires living in New York City.

Family plays an important role in my fiction, and while I don’t consider myself a fantasy writer, I do enjoy adding a measure of the supernatural to otherwise realistic fiction. This blend runs through a number of my books, namely
The Other Shepards
,
Where I Want to Be, Picture the Dead
, and
Tighter
. I write stories that emphasize our lasting connections to those we have lost, and how our families—past and present—inform our everyday life in ways that can be both startling and steadfast.

In 2007, my husband, Erich, and I traded Manhattan for Brooklyn, where we live very happily with our two young children—a daughter, Priscilla, and a son, Hastings—as well as a ten-pound shih tzu named Edith. Parenthood has inspired me to write for a younger audience, and to that end, I teamed up with the author Courtney Sheinmel to create an early-reader series called Agnes and Clarabelle, forthcoming from Bloomsbury Press, about a pair of two differently anxious friends.

My husband and I both avidly support nonprofit organizations such as the MacDowell Colony, Prep for Prep, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, buildOn, and 826NYC, an after-school tutoring and creative writing center for high school youth, where I sit on the board of directors. I am also a member of the PEN American Center and the Writers Guild of America. Visit me at
www.adelegriffin.com
and on Twitter at @adelegriffin.