Pieces of My Sister's Life (32 page)

I watched her, unblinking.

“Just for a minute, I mean it stopped almost right after it started, but then he says, ‘I have to be with you tonight,’ how his wife doesn’t touch him anymore, the kind of bullcrap he’d been giving me from the beginning. And I say, ‘If you want to discuss the money, you can come by the house. But otherwise I never want to see you again.’”

I tensed and slid away from her, to the end of the bed. “You invited him in.”

“No. I mean I would’ve, I guess, if he’d been acting sane, but he was banging on the door, totally drunk, first shouting how he loves me, and then how horny he is. I mean shouting it, ‘I’m gonna explode!’ And I was so freaked out I ran upstairs and kept screaming at him to go away, which is when he broke in.”

“And tried to rape you.”

She looked up at the ceiling. “I kissed him at the party, which I don’t know, maybe it made him think the whole thing was a tease, that I’d pretended to blackmail him just to get him back into my life. Hell, maybe he thought the rape was a game, too.”

I suddenly remembered the night I’d seen Eve with Ryan on Daddy’s boat, her hands tied with a silk scarf, her fake-sounding moans. I felt a twisting nausea, like an uncoiling snake.

“It’s all I could think about for weeks after, how he’d literally deflated when I first told him I never wanted to see him again, like I was sucking the air out of him.” She wiped at her eyes, then stared at the dampness on her hands. “And when I found out I was pregnant I just kept thinking, How am I going to be able to look at this baby without wanting to kill myself?”

I felt the blood drain from my face, a cold numbness. “You said the baby was Justin’s.”

She glanced at me, then shook her head. “How could I have known whose she was?”

“You said Ryan always wore a condom!”

“He sometimes wore a condom.” She hugged her chest. “Sometimes not. So when I found out I was pregnant I just assumed based on probability, one time with Justin versus umpteen times with Ryan.”

“But you told me!”

“What else could I do? Part of me thought if I kept telling you the baby was his I could make it be true.”

I slammed my fist on the bed. “The whole thing was a lie!”

“But it turned out not to be, right? I mean look at Gillian, she has his hair, his smile, his big front teeth. She’s his daughter.”

“You know that’s not what matters.” I shook my head blindly. “You knew this would make him more yours than mine. You knew I loved him and you didn’t even give a damn!”

“I wasn’t thinking about you! If I let myself accept that the baby could be Ryan’s, how could I live with the fact that I’d just killed him? I was alone too, and I was grasping for whatever I could.” She swiped at her face. “But the night I told you I was pregnant, you know what I really thought? I thought you’d maybe yell at me, but then you’d understand how much the whole thing hurt and how messed up I was inside. And we’d cry together. We’d both feel so awful for what I was going through that it’d bring us back together.”

I let out a grating laugh, a sound like a revved motor.

“And we’d figure out what to do together,” she said. “I
needed
you to help me figure it out.”

“That’s so like you.” My voice was cold. “You know if I was you it would’ve been completely the other way around. I would’ve said the baby was Ryan’s, would’ve
hoped
it was his so I wouldn’t have to live with this constant reminder that I’d ruined your life.”

Eve’s forehead creased, almost pleading. “So you’re better than me, we’ve established that.”

“How can you be sarcastic about this? You said you understood how it was for me, but you don’t have any idea. I was destroyed! You didn’t just take Justin away, you took away everything I believed in. You took my world away!”

“I know.”

“You don’t know!” I jumped up and raised my arm, muscles tensed to hit her, and then she made a weak choking sound and her face went pink. I dropped my arm and watched her, suddenly terrified she wouldn’t be able to find her breath. And there she was, struggling for air, so thin her bones would rattle like dried spaghetti if I punched her. My rage disappeared with a jerk, like somebody had pulled it from me. She’d needed me and I hadn’t been there, the thing you should always be able to count on regardless of circumstances, that the person who’s been with you since the hour of your conception won’t desert you when you’re most in pain.

“Damn you,” I said, but she was dying, she was dying and she’d suffered for this too. She was dying and this was one thing I could give her, the thing she needed most. I sat back on the bed and angled her head with the pillow to help her breathe, rubbed softly, helplessly, at the soft fringes on her scalp.

“I’m so sorry, Kerry,” she whispered.

I watched her for a minute, then buried my head against her chest. “Me too,” I said. “Me too, I’m sorry too.”

“I thought we’d both leave him. I swear that’s what I thought the night we wrote the letters, that you’d see how he was choosing me but I was choosing you. This dumb-ass romantic image, you and me walking off into the sunset and leaving him behind, not thinking how it’d look to you, how you’d feel. But then when you left…”

I clutched at her nightgown, spoke against her chest, half feeling what I was saying, half of me numb. “It’s true, you know. Nothing’s strong enough.”

She set her hand lightly on my hair. After a minute she grasped it, as if willing me to stay in place. “And then what I thought,” she said, “I thought you’d go away for a week and feel awful. And then you’d come back and we’d make up, like every fight we ever had. But you didn’t come back, and I was pregnant and the truth is…” She pulled her hand away. “The truth is I loved him, Kerry. While you were here I could fight against it but deep down I was in love with him. I grew up with him too, he was my hero too. All our lives I had the same dreams of him you had.”

“I know.” I lifted my head, looked into her face. Her eyes seemed brighter even through the tears, brighter than I’d seen them since I’d come back. “And it’s okay,” I said. “All of it’s okay now.”

She pressed the heel of her hand against a tear on her upper lip. “Do you hate me?” she whispered.

“No. No, God, of course not.” And there was more I needed to say. I wanted to tell her I loved her, words that had once come so easily. But what I felt was more than that; I felt the pointlessness of it all, how decisions made years ago when we were too young to make decisions had taken away everything that should have been ours. All this time I’d been blaming her and punishing myself, all because of a fight between children that should’ve been dusted off years ago and looked at for what it was.

“I never did,” I said. But Eve didn’t respond. Her hands were slack over the blanket; she scarcely seemed to be breathing. I put my hand on her chest for reassurance. “I do love you,” I whispered. And I’d like to think she heard the words, but maybe the only thing that mattered was that I’d said them.

35

I
SAT
at the kitchen table and opened the catalogue I’d ordered just for fun. Overhead the fluorescent light flickered bright and dim, bright and dim. I scanned the pages feeling overwhelmed: Art History, Nineteenth-Century Lit, Music Appreciation—The Baroque Era. I knew even with a GED I’d have no chance of getting in. But God, wouldn’t it be amazing? Wouldn’t it be incredible to understand things I’d never even known existed, to understand, really understand, what it was that made things beautiful?

Justin strode in with a pad of paper, a huge smile on his face. “UMass?” he said.

I shrugged. “Just looking, just for the hell of it.”

“You’d be the first grad in your family. Your name would go down in the Barnard book of history.” He grinned and waved his pen at me. “So speaking of books, take a look. First good thing I’ve written in months. I was looking out the window and I just felt this tremendous urge to write, and it came out of me like magic, like it’s been waiting there all along.”

“They call that your muse, right? Your muse took a break but now it’s come back. That’s great, Justin.”

He glanced at me. “It’s a love story.”

I looked up at the flickering light. “Oh?”

“Or not a love story per se, more a story of settling into destiny, my king and queen growing old together.”

Canardia,
I thought blankly,
named for his wife, Eve Barnard-Caine.

“See, I was blaming you for my writer’s block, but now I know it wasn’t you at all. It really started after the chemo stopped, when the morphine wasn’t enough and she was hurting so bad. And part of me was thinking maybe it would be for the best. And another little part of me was thinking maybe it would be best for me too, it was all so hard, and when she asked me to help her…” He stared at his pen, then threw it on the table, lowered himself into a chair. “It was eating at me and eating at me so there was nothing left.”

“I know.”

“But what I see now, what’s helped me is realizing that I can’t help her die. Of course I can’t, I should’ve realized it so much sooner. And now it’s such a relief to stop struggling with myself, to let destiny decide how she’ll go.”

I lifted his pen, reading the print on its side as if that could tell me something. All it told me was that he was no longer using the pen I’d given him.

“I got this card today from Gillian, Father’s Day.”

I smiled flatly. “Happy Father’s Day.”

“It is, you know, I’m happy today. You know what she wrote? The only thing inside, she said thanks for taking care of Mom.” He smiled. “For taking care of Mom, and what I was thinking was what if I gave Eve what she wanted, even if it was out of love, and God forbid somehow Gillie found out what I’d done? She’d never forgive me.”

I took his hand. “You shouldn’t have been put in that position. It’s an impossible decision.”

“And it’s more than that. Maybe there was a time when I was so angry at having my life taken away, at being controlled like she controlled me, that I thought no way will this ever feel right. But now this is my life, it feels like home, and I need Eve here for as long as I can have her.”

“Having your life taken away?”

He watched me for a minute, his hand gripping mine, tight enough to hurt. “It should’ve been us, you know that.”

I felt the bite of something dark and acidic in my stomach. I dropped his hand.

“I’ve accepted what happened, and I love Eve so much, I do. But this wasn’t how I thought things would turn out.”

“You went to her first, Justin.”

He stared at me blankly, then went on as if he hadn’t heard. “I know it’s wrong of me to blame her, especially now. But she was so needy, and she must’ve known what that would do to me. I was nineteen and she was so vulnerable and scared about what had happened to her life.” He stared at his notepad, then threw it on the table upside down. “I was trying to comfort her, to protect her and she took advantage. I don’t blame her for it, but I’m trying to make you understand what it did to me, having her all over me at a time when we were all so confused. I didn’t know what I needed, but I needed something. And she was there.”

“You went to her first,” I said again. “Even before the night Ryan died. Stop lying to yourself, Justin. It wasn’t anything she did, it was you.”

He stood suddenly and walked to the window. When he turned back his face was pale, flickering with the light, dim, bright, dim, bright. “It doesn’t matter now anyway. What happened back then doesn’t matter because now I need her. I love her so goddamned much.”

I stared at the table, the words racing through me, faster, faster until I couldn’t hold them back. “How could you, Justin?” I said. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

Suddenly, without warning, Justin leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine.

I startled back and he reached for my arm. “Kerry—”

“What are you doing? You love Eve, you need her, and now you grab at me?”

Justin’s face seemed to sink inward. “I don’t know.”

“You just want some kind of reward for telling yourself that you love your wife, figuring out you love her enough to watch her suffer for God knows how long? That’s really honorable, Justin, you’re a saint.”

“I don’t know! The whole thing, all of it’s been such a mistake, I’m just trying to make the best of something so screwed up.”

I remembered suddenly Eve’s long-ago words. Justin had wanted me so he could kiss me and imagine he was kissing her. Eve was dying, and now he wanted me again. My hands were shaking. I squeezed them into fists and stood. “The best for who?” I said.

He watched me without speaking. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, bobbed again.

“I loved you,” I said. “Maybe I’ll always love you, but I’m not sixteen anymore. I know enough not to pretend things should be different from what they are.” I held his eyes for a minute, then walked away.

In my room I pulled the envelope from under my bed, the letters that had sent me away. I turned them face up, began to work them against the line I’d already pieced together. I didn’t feel the time sliding past, barely noticed the outside sounds of wind and tree branches or the arc of sunlight coasting from one window to another and then slipping behind the trees.

When I’d finally finished, I stared at Eve’s letter.

Justin,

What I told you last night, it was a lie, you knew that didn’t you? I’m just sick of playing around and second guessing. So this is the last game. I’m pregnant, Justin. With your child. And I’m going to keep it, whatever happens with us. There’s a hole in me, and my whole life probably since Mom left was built around it. I used to think maybe you could fill that hole, but it turns out I didn’t need you. I’m full up now for the first time. I’m in my Dad’s room if you want to talk it out.

Love, Eve

I fingered the scraps, now soft with age. He’d read my letter first, the letter of a child, and then he read Eve’s and chose adulthood. And who could blame him? Either of them.

I took the scraps into the bathroom, lifted the toilet lid. They flushed in a lazy spiral and disappeared without a trace. She’d told him about her pregnancy. She’d told him, but she’d had every right to. Me, Eve, Justin, Gillian, not a love triangle but a love square. And wherever that square had started, it didn’t matter now. All that mattered was that after Eve was gone we’d hold her space.

And so I couldn’t stay.

Justin had chosen Eve and it wasn’t my space to take.