Pieces of My Sister's Life (9 page)

And then I thought of Eve and I didn’t want to open my eyes. Wanted to stay here shut behind my own eyelids, my own space where, if things never exactly felt right, they were at least familiar.

It was the sound of Gillian’s voice from downstairs that finally got me up. I dressed quickly and walked downstairs, following the sounds to the kitchen, where Eve, facing away from me, was spreading peanut butter on bread. I stood outside the doorway, listening.

“What’s it look like?” Gillian said.

“It’s beautiful, Gillian, big stone buildings and quiet like in a church. All these people walking around with armloads of books, or sitting in the courtyard discussing physics.”

“You mean
gym
? How come?”

Eve smiled. “Physics, not phys ed. It’s a kind of science. I don’t know anything about it either, except that you’d have to be smart to discuss it.”

“How come you didn’t go there?”

“’Cause I’m not one of those smart people. I just didn’t ever care enough about school to even think about college. But you, you’re much smarter than me. Someday they’ll have a quote in their catalogues. They’ll say something like ‘The University has graduated such notables as the eminent Gillian Caine.’”

“Ha-ha,” Gillian said, and then her eyes flicked my way. Her face hardened and she stepped away from the door. “We should go soon.”

“Think Miss Jasper’ll mind if I miss the Conservancy meeting this afternoon? I think I’m quitting it anyway. I don’t really care about birds and flowers anymore, least not as much as they do. Hell, I don’t think I ever did. I mean, who gives a damn if we lose more scrub grass? Your dad just made me join to keep me busy. It was that or the quilting circle, and those old ladies cutting up fabric and sewing it back together would drive me absolutely nuts.”

Gillian’s eyes were still on me. I tried to smile, the wide, fake smile you give young babies to make sure they understand you’re being friendly. Her mouth twitched and she looked up at Eve. Eve turned and raised her eyebrows like she was surprised I was still in her home. “So you’re up,” she said.

“You going somewhere?”

“Taking the ferry out to Connecticut. Justin and I went to see Yale a few years back when we were traveling for a book tour. I’ve been telling Gillian I’d take her when I felt better, and this seemed like as good a time as any.”

I waited for her to ask me along. Maybe this was what she was thinking, that it might be good to spend time with me away from the pressing memory of these walls. But she only packed her sandwiches into paper bags and turned to Gillian. “We better take off. Next ferry’s not till noon.”

I searched her face. Still Eve, I could see that now where I hadn’t seen it yesterday; same crooked smile, same brusque but graceful swing of her hips as she walked. But somehow different, something missing, like varnish sanded off a table. She passed me, Gillian in tow, pulling coats from the hall closet.

“When do you think you’ll be back?” I said.

“Not sure. But don’t wait on dinner, I never eat much anyway and I’ll buy Gillian some McDonald’s. Justin went downtown for the paper, but he’ll take care of you when he gets home.”

Gillian turned to look at me, her face still and hard, then took her mother’s hand and walked out the door.

I stood there a minute unmoving, dizzy with the sudden strange sense of the room expanding, emptying, too much space around me.
Hey!
I wanted to call.
Wait for me!
I watched their blurred figures through the frosted glass of the front door, listened to the crackle-crunch of gravel as they drove away. I sank onto the bottom step, trying not to think what this meant, her leaving me the day after I’d arrived.

It was then I noticed the new runner that led from the hallway up the stairs. I fingered it, the beige shag now a beige oriental. And clean. All bloodstains gone.

I stared at it, the memories mounting like stacked dominoes, tipping one on another on another. Set so long ago and perfectly placed and stored beneath layers of dust. But now laid flat beneath this new rug and that closed door, my sister on the other side.

I touched the places where his blood had been, a drop on the landing, a smudge on the second stair. In the years I’d been away I’d wondered how they could stand to live in this house, with everything that had happened here. But now I realized this was the biggest difference between us. That where the past would always haunt me until I died, all Eve and Justin had to do was change a rug, and they were able to forget.

October

1993

9

B
ACK THEN
I believed in magic. Maybe part of me still does. Part of me thinks the night of our first kiss was magic, and that the sickness after was recrimination for venturing into the forbidden, like the Little Mermaid’s bleeding feet. A small price to pay.

I didn’t sleep at all that night. In the beginning I was sure it was my racing thoughts that made me feel so weird, but when I had to run to the bathroom, doubled over in pain, it was obvious that there must be something more.

Later, lying with my cheek against the toilet seat, I remembered the kiss (THE KISS!), and between waves of nausea, the brightness of it was enough to make me dizzy. I replayed it over and over, a million times over. What was Justin thinking now? And why did he run away? Was he feeling fear? Mortification? Pity? I staggered back to bed and collapsed on the covers. Eve rolled over and stared, her mouth freezing mid-yawn.

The nausea reeled back through my belly and I brought my knees up to my chest. Eve came to kneel by my bed. “Oh God, Kerry, you…what happened?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and rolled against the wall.

Eve ran to the bureau, brought back a hand mirror. I opened my eyes, and in a wave of dizziness I saw myself, unrecognizable, lips swollen Betty Boop–like over my protruding tongue. I pressed my hands against my face.

Eve sat by me and began to stroke lightly at my hair. I imagined her hand was Daddy’s hand and then my mother’s, the same long fingernails and faint scent left over from the morning’s spray of perfume. I heard her hushing voice and looked into her eyes, and then like a sudden plummeting over an edge, I remembered her words the day before,
He’s planning to marry Leslie, you know.
I remembered the tilt of her head when she spoke and a sort of complacency, and focusing on a tiny hard core inside the haze of my nausea, I glared into Eve’s eyes and pushed her hand away.

The next day Mrs. Caine brought me to the medical center. Dr. Bradley said I’d had an allergic reaction and set me up on one of the center’s five beds. He dripped electrolytes into my body and gave me a shot of antihistamine which fogged my brain and shrank my tongue and lips back to size. Justin was brought in hours later.

When the doctor asked what we’d eaten, I couldn’t think what to say. Tell him we ate rotted flowers and root powder? They’d lock me up and throw away the key. I finally said we’d eaten “maybe not all the way cooked” chicken, which seemed to satisfy them well enough.

Back home I slept, nursed tea and toast and slept some more. My dreams were cocaine-wild, ten-dimensional, infused with colors and textures I’d never seen before. I dreamed of Justin at different ages, in different forms. I saw him grow from baby to child to man, and then still growing, arms to branches, hair sprouting shoots and leaves. “Kerry…” he called, voice echoing off tunnels of rock. I wondered if it hurt, becoming a tree.

“Kerry?”

I opened my eyes. Justin sat on the end of my bed, face pale, eyes dark and hollowed.

I reached forward and he stared at my hand for a minute, then took it. “How you feeling?”

“Had a dream.” My voice was dry and broken. I tried to swallow.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Don’t ruin it, please oh please. Who’s it hurt to just not ruin it?
“You were a baby and then you were growing, and then, how wild is this, you were a tree!”

“About the other night.”

I shook my head.
Please.

“I don’t know what’s happening, Kerry, what I was doing.”

I reached for a cup of now-cold tea by the bed. I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t stand to see any kind of pity, regret. “I’m sorry if I poisoned us.”

“I saw Leslie last night.”

I hunched beneath the covers, focusing on the pinkness of his lips so I wouldn’t have to hear his words.

“And I told her what happened, I had to. Maybe it was because I was sick, delirious, but it just came out. All of it. I never hurt anyone like that before.”

All of it. Leslie would hate me. She’d flash me dirty looks in school. I wouldn’t be invited to their wedding. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Justin touched my hand. “I’m not,” he said, then stood and left the room.

“Kerry?”

I wrestled back from the depths of dreamless sleep. “Justin?”

But it was Eve at the end of the bed, wearing a narrow, closed-mouthed smile. “Hey, dollface, welcome to the land of the living.”

Where am I? Where’s Daddy?
Oh. “Hi.”

“Listen, Kerry, snap out of it. We got problems.”

My eyes blurred. I looked up at the ceiling. “I have to tell you something, Eve. I need to tell you so you can tell me if it’s real.”

“Mr. Hodges called, the sonofabitch, and he says, ‘Miss Barnard, you know you’re two weeks late on the rent?’ I want to tell him, you just try being in high school with no parents, no money, and worrying about some fucking SOB coming to take away the roof over your head just so’s he can afford another Renoir to hang over his toilet.”

I nodded, picturing Justin’s eyes before (THE KISS!), how they’d melted, all the hard edges gone. What did it mean?

“But thing is, our bank account’s at practically zip. And what with the bill from the medical center and next month’s rent, we’re wiped clean. The garage only nets us two hundred a week, which means we still have to cough up at least another three hundred bucks.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

Eve’s forehead creased. “And we got another brown envelope on the porch, ten bucks, which is starting to piss me off. Don’t they realize we’re in such deep shit that ten dollars is just insulting?” She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “And get this. Talk about being on my very last nerve, Bert and Georgia called last night, right after Mr. Hodges. See what you miss when you’re asleep? You’ll never guess.”

Sudden certainty punched at my stomach. “They found Mom.”

“What?” She gave a sharp laugh. “No, no, they just called to say they wanted us to come for Christmas. ‘You girls should be with your family,’ Georgia said. Christmas is for families, just like a Hallmark card. I wanted to ask Bert to blow into her ear, see if he could feel a breeze out the other side.”

I nodded. “Do you know if Justin’s home?”

“You don’t get it. I heard Georgia’s voice, Kerry, they’re serious.”

“We could ask them for money.”

“Are you kidding? That’ll be just the proof they need to show we’re failures, that we can’t make it on our own. They’ll say,
Why, how much do you need, dearie?
and then,
You know, don’t you, that living with us would be absolutely free?”

“Justin kissed me.”

Eve froze, staring at me. I burst out laughing, couldn’t help it. “We had dinner and I told him…God, I told him I loved him. And then I ran and he grabbed me and he kissed me. He kissed me!” I pulled Eve into my arms and spoke into her hair. “And now I don’t know if it’s true.”

“What’s true?” Eve’s voice was a whisper.

I pulled away. “What he said to me was more or less that he was glad it happened. At least I think that’s what he said. I was so sick yesterday, maybe I dreamed the whole thing.”

Eve was trembling. I could see the quiver in her fingers, the pinched creases in her face. “How come you told me he was getting engaged?” I said.

Eve smiled stiffly. “He’s not? I guess I thought—” She shook her head. “I don’t know, Ker, I just didn’t want you to get hurt is all. I know how caught up you get in things, how you lose yourself, when Justin’s just an if-it-feels-good-do-it kind of guy. I didn’t want you to waste your time hoping for something totally impossible.”

“He’d never hurt me.”

Eve shrugged and turned to the window. “So did he say he loves you?”

“No, not really. I don’t know. He might have implied it, I’m not sure.”

“Implied it?” Eve was scraping at the cuticle of her thumb, a habit we’d both had and both overcome years ago. But when I took her hand to stop her, she pulled away and smiled. “What was it like? The kiss?”

I bit back a smile. “I don’t know if I can really explain it. It’s like, imagine the best movie we ever saw, not the sappy romance-novel kind but the kind where a couple’s reunited after twenty years. It was like that except better; he grabbed me and then he kissed real soft all down my face.” I traced my finger from Eve’s temple to her lips. She flinched. “I thought I was going to pass out.”

Eve closed her eyes. “Oh, Kerry.” We sat in silence for a minute, and then Eve opened her eyes and grinned. “Remember how we used to do hickeys on our arms?”

“I know! And pretend to make out with pillows?”

Eve hooted with laughter. I grabbed my pillow, buried my face against it. “Oh, daahling, your lips are so soft and sweet. How I adoore you.”

Eve grabbed her own pillow. “Take me now!”

I watched her for a minute, her wet, smacking kisses, until she pulled back the pillow, her face red. I smiled, feeling suddenly older. “But really it turns out it wasn’t like that at all. I mean no comparison. It was like a million tiny nerves that spark from your lips all through your body, even outside your body. I can’t explain it, Eve, there’s no way to explain it in words. You won’t understand till you do it yourself.”

Eve stood suddenly. “Good, Ker. That’s good.” She started towards the door, then turned. “I’m glad for you, Kerry, really I am. He was bound to choose one of us, I guess.”

I watched her leave, my smile slowly fading. I curled under the blankets, trying not to listen to her retreating footsteps, trying not to think. Because deep down I understood. Deep down I knew this was exactly how I would have reacted if the situation were reversed, as if Eve had stolen Justin away.

Nothing much changed over the next week. Justin and I didn’t talk to each other beyond saying “Hey.” I avoided his eyes and he avoided mine. He stayed home on the nights he’d usually spent with Leslie, even though he didn’t say anything to indicate he wasn’t seeing her anymore.

I returned to school, although I might as well not have for all the attention I gave it. I drew hearts in the corners of isosceles triangles and traced his name with my finger round the edges of my desk. Leslie pointedly ignored me, and I started to feel bad. I thought I should do something nice for her, maybe buy her flowers. Or a sympathy card. But I didn’t want to look like I was gloating, and besides, Leslie was the type who’d never have to look for a boyfriend; once word got out that she was free, they’d look for her. So what I’d done was wrong, but not that wrong. Not really.

The next Saturday it snowed, the first snowfall of the season. I was watching out the bedroom window when Eve came upstairs to find me. She laid her head on my shoulder and we stood there looking out, our thoughts the same. “You think we should?” she said finally.

It was Daddy’s ritual at the first snowfall to take us outside so we could catch the snowflakes on our tongues. And I knew it would feel wrong to do it without him, but it would also feel much worse not to do it at all. “He’d want us to.”

“I hate when people say that, how he’d want us to go on the same. That’s total crap. If I died, I wouldn’t want you going on the same.”

I took her hand and smiled. “We have to. We’ll probably still be doing this when we’re sixty.”

“I really hope not,” Eve said, “or they’ll be locking us away in a nursing home and teaching us how many crafty things you can make out of Popsicle sticks.”

Out on the lawn, I watched as Eve tilted back her head. After a minute I closed my eyes and threw out my arms, mouth open wide, and I felt him. I really did. I knew if I could just reach a little farther, I’d feel his hand. He’d grab for me, hold tight, he’d laugh like a kid, dance me in a jig that would make Eve roll her eyes. And at the heavy thud of footsteps on the walk, I almost called his name. But of course it wasn’t Daddy at all. It was Justin.

He stood, watching, hands fisted at his sides, his eyes liquid and unfocused. But when our eyes met, the look hardened instantly. He glanced at Eve. “Expecting two inches,” he said.

Eve looked from me to Justin and back. “It’s freezing out here. Let’s go in.”

I nodded, but my feet wouldn’t move.

“Actually,” Justin said, “I was wondering, Kerry, if you could help me down at the garage. We’ve got these discrepancies with the bills, and I know you’re good with numbers.”

Eve’s laugh was dry. “Numbers? Kerry? Nice try. That’s really lame.”

I couldn’t look at her. “Okay,” I said. “Sure.” I raised my hand good-bye, but still couldn’t look. Only after Justin and I pulled out from the drive did I look into the side mirror to see her standing in the same spot on the lawn. Her arms were limp by her sides, snow freckling her hair. It made me feel like crying, but it also gave me an awful feeling of victory.

We drove in silence for a while, my insides stuttering with an unbearable thrill. Suddenly Justin pulled to the side of the deserted road. Both of us stared at the dashboard. “Look,” he said finally, “I don’t know what to do.”

I didn’t answer, didn’t know what to answer. Outside all was so hushed under the blanket of snow, it almost seemed like the whole world was waiting with me.