The Language of Sisters (21 page)

My mother kissed my cheek. “Eat more. You are too thin.”

* * *

Lindy and I watched about twenty women in a dragon boat row down the river from the bedroom deck of my tugboat. Their ferocious dragon's red mouth was wide open, white teeth ready to bite. The purple and blue tail rose like a rainbow off the back.

“I can't believe Tweedle Dee Dum and Tweedle Dum Dee want to dismantle the dock and kick us off,” I said. “I'd like to tweedle their necks with my bare hands.”

“I can believe it.” Lindy was wearing a blue skirt to her knees, tennis shoes, and a pink blouse buttoned to the top button. Her hair was back in a ball, her glasses perched on her nose.

“Men take what men want,” she said. “If they have to run over someone to do it, a hand tucked around their own balls for protection, they'll do it. They're interested in money, power, and sex. Not in that order always. And with this dock, they think they can make more money if they transform this whole area into condos. The sewer system is having problems and they don't want to fix it. Same with the electricity lines. Men are like containers of sweat and body fluids with brains that only limp toward competence.”

“You don't like men, do you?”

“I find them silly. Ridiculous. Sometimes dangerous and violent, but a species that has not evolved at the same pace as women.”

“Given your career, how do you hide your disdain?”

She rolled her eyes. “Seriously? I smile and stand in a negligee. They can't see past that because their dick is straight out.”

“Business seems good.”

“It is. I have a long waiting list. One man offered six hundred dollars an hour. He's at the top of the list now. I'm kicking out one of my clients tomorrow.”

“He probably won't be happy, will he?”

“I'm going to tell him that I'm going back to school to become a librarian.”

“Will he believe it?”

“It doesn't matter. He's too fat.”

“Ah. I'm always worried you'll get hurt, but I wonder if you ever worry you'll be arrested.”

She laughed. “My dear friend, Toni. You've heard of a little black book? Let's just say I have a little black computer with a long list. If I'm arrested, five names come out a day until I'm out of jail, charges dropped. Too many high-powered men have been on my houseboat for hanky-panky-spanky for me to be arrested.”

The dragon boat flew by, the women laughing and chatting. We waved. They waved back. Lindy opened the lid of a pink box. Two huge cupcakes were inside. “I went out to that bakery in Trillium River for these. Bommarito's Bakery. Best cupcakes on the planet.”

“Oh, yum. Sometimes I drive all the way out there for their cupcakes, too. Pretty drive.”

We ate in silence. The cupcakes were oversized. Mine had huge daisies on it and Lindy's had a dalmatian.

“I do not want to lose my home, this dock.” I didn't want to lose Nick.

“You won't, Toni.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know.” She licked her fingers.

“You're not worried about this at all?”

“Nah. Here, let me have a bite of your cupcake and I'll let you have a bite of mine.”

We leaned over and took a bite of each other's cupcake.

Lindy's a true friend.

“I love cupcakes and I love books, Toni. You know I visit different libraries in town and hang out among the stacks.”

“Yes, you strange book nerd.”

“I love the feel of books and the smell of them. I'm rereading
East of Eden
now. Want to read it together?”

“Sure.”

Lindy had to leave at two o'clock for her appointment.

“See you at the meeting Thursday, Toni, where I will tell people we don't need to do anything, because I can save the dock, and they won't listen and will immediately go back to their useless plotting.”

“Got it. See ya then.”

* * *

That night I opened the door to the kayak house and dragged out our double seater and sat in it on the deck. I pretended to row, like the oddity that I am.

Marty said to me, after our fourth kayaking date, on the Rogue River, “I love kayaking with you, Toni, I do. But how about dinner? I'd like to take you out. Now, don't say no again. Not right away. Think about it.”

I thought about it at home, called him, and said yes. “This doesn't mean we're dating, Marty.”

“No, it doesn't. If we were dating, our parents would have a huge and embarrassing party. They would make an announcement at church and ask for a group blessing. Your father would offer up a long prayer of thanks. Your mother would make a dessert called ‘I Want Toni and Marty To Get Married,' and put it on the Specials board at the restaurant. No, we'll keep this between us.”

“Exactly. I'll be harangued until I'm forced to move to Australia and live with kangaroos.”

“That sounds appealing. Can I come? I like kangaroos.”

Marty took me to dinner at elegant restaurants. One day we went hiking. Day trips to the beach and mountains. We went to plays and the symphony, things I had never done. I loved both. That surprised me. And in some inexplicable way it made me feel better about myself. In the audience, in the theatre, I listened to the characters' problems and grief, their tears and aloneness, and it touched me. I could relate to their loss, their fear, their love.

I lost myself in Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. I always thought people who went to the symphony were snobs. I wasn't a snob, but I could feel the music.

When my parents dragged me to church, and Marty was there, too, with his parents, we were polite to each other, not giving out a single hint that we were friends.

My mother would admonish me, finger in the air. “That Marty! He for you. He a Russian. He make you happy. In the life and under the sheeties. What that bird called, Alexei, that Marty remind me of?”

“A blue heron. I think you make mistake, Antonia. Marty a true man. Loyal. Faithful. Please. Give that man a talking to, eh? I want what is best for you, he is the best for you, okay?”

When they weren't looking, Marty would wink at me.

Marty finally said to me, after five months of patience and kindness, of smiles and talk, of his waiting for me to come around, to want to be more than a friend, against my rigid resistance, “Toni, I want to thank you for the friendship.”

We both laughed. We were in my loft downtown. I'd made dinner. Italian.

“You are my best friend.”

I sniffled, all emotional. I stared out the windows at the city lights, then back to him. “You're mine, too, Marty. And Valerie and Ellie.”

He had such an endearing smile. “Always, your sisters. But we have a problem.”

“What is the problem?”
What? A problem?

“The problem is that I am in love with you.”

I swear my heart flipped over and danced a jig. “Ah, that.”

“Yes, that.” His face sobered. “But you have said to me, a hundred times, spear to my heart”—he mimicked spearing himself—“that you only want to be friends with me.”

I took a deep, shaky breath.

“And Toni, I want both. I want friendship and I want the forever.”

My hands started to shake. He wanted more. I had always known it, felt it. He had been hoping I would change my mind.

“I need to know how you feel, honey.”

Breathe, Toni,
I told myself,
before you pass out and make a fool of yourself and your tongue lolls out of your head and you wet your pants when you're unconscious. Figure this out.

“I want to be with you for the rest of my life, Toni.”

“You do?”
Oh. My. Goodness.
“We've been friends all this time... . ”

“Friends, but then I think lusty thoughts about you.” He wriggled his eyebrows up and down and made me laugh. “Toni, I can't have this relationship as it is anymore. It hurts to know that we're not together and may not ever be together. Lately, it's gotten worse. I want to get married, I want children, and if I am not right for you, I need to know.”

“And then that's it?” I felt an enormous sense of loss. Of breathtaking sadness. “We're done? No friendship?”

“Toni, see it from my perspective. I have met the love of my life, funny enough, through my parents, and yours. But I can't keep seeing you if you will never see me as the love of your life. If I'll always be only a friend.”

“You've never even kissed me. How would you know if we would be ...”

“Compatible?”

I nodded.

“We are. I'll show you.”

And he kissed me. It felt so ... natural, for a second. So safe. So comfortable, so right.

For about five seconds.

Then the passion flared up in me like I'd caught on fire, flames shooting toward the ceiling. I had never felt a wave of passion like that in my life. I actually gasped. He took it from there. He led. I followed, panting, responding. He was seductive. He was sexy. He knew how to make love even better than he could kayak or operate on people.

Darned if Marty wasn't amazing.

It was a tumble of uncontrollable heat and passion, as if it had all been bottled up from the second I'd met him, and I stomped it down because I wasn't ready for it, and it came barreling on out. I was naked before I knew it, my bra off, my panties gone. He pulled me on top of him, and skin to skin, body to body, we were smokin' smooth velvet. He kissed me as he entered me, and we locked eyes.

“I love you, Toni,” he whispered.

“I love you, too, Marty.” The words were automatic. Easy. True.

I closed my eyes because I could not keep them open anymore, my legs around his hips, our rhythm perfect, my orgasm blasting through my body, followed by another and another, and his, too, all mingled up together, seductive and loving, and trusting.

And there we were. Panting, all tangled up.

When we were done panting, our hearts slowing back to normal, we smiled, we laughed. Three hours later, we were at it again. And that was us. We had a sex life that wouldn't quit, because it was based in love and laughter and enduring, eternal friendship.

* * *

I heard Valerie's voice in my head in the morning, about ten o'clock. I called her from work. I was at my desk reviewing an article I'd written about a couple who had left city life to move to the country. They couldn't stand the stress of their jobs, the commute, the time they didn't have with their kids. The father became a high school teacher and a coach, the mother started a candle-making company from home. They restored their house; bought chickens, two horses, three dogs; and they were happy. Ta-da!

Valerie was not happy, and I was flat-out frightened.

“The Barton family is psychotic.”

“What's going on?”

“Still snarling at me with their semi-toothless mouths, their skeleton tattoos taunting me as I know they would like me to be a skeleton.”

I rubbed my forehead, right on my widow's peak. I figured she was doing the same. This whole situation was making me nervous. “Did something new happen?”

“Yes.”

“What? I thought you got a security system and cameras at your house.”

“I did. I do.”

“Then what?”

“Taped to my car windshield at work was a note.”

“And the note said?”

“ ‘You're going to die, sister.' ”

That freezing-cold snake wound around and up my spine. “You called the police?”

“Yes. They have the note. They spelled ‘you're' wrong. No comma between the word ‘die' and ‘sister.' ”

“They have poor grammar, then.” Black humor. Kozlovskys have to use it.

“Yes. Psychotics who don't know how to write. Often psychotics are incredibly bright people, but often not, so this is not peculiar.”

“I'm worried about you.” I put my hand to my throat, frozen cold now, chilled.

“I'm not. I'll be fine. But be listening for me. I'll tell you where I am in my head if things go south with those tobacco-spitting sickos.”

We chuckled. It was forced, but it was chuckle or break down into pathetic semihysterical sobs, which would annoy both of us.

“May the Bartons be burned in their trailers,” my sister said, “run over by stampeding horses, and pounded into dust.”

“Still so creative in your curses. Love you.”

“Love you more than Mama's Russian tea cakes.”

* * *

“I am not leaving,” Jayla said, her stethoscope from work still around her neck. “They will have to explode the dock before I will hook up my houseboat and move it down the river.”

My dock neighbors, not the whole dock this time, only those of us from the six houseboats, were at Jayla and Beth's, the nurse and the doctor's, to discuss our mutual problem of losing our home for our floating homes.

I wanted to see Nick, but he was working late. He had been working long hours. It had given me a breather from the guilt I felt sleeping with him, but I missed him, which made me feel guilty, too. I wanted space, because I didn't want the stress of fighting this relationship, and yet all I wanted to do was curl up next to that warm body and lose myself for a while.

I was an emotional mess. I felt like I had a tornado in my brain.

Beth had made paella for everyone. We chatted first, and poured a lot of wine, then got down to the business of the dock shutting down because of Tweedle Dee Dum and Tweedle Dum Dee.