The Language of Sisters (6 page)

“Sure.” He held out his hand again. “Nice to meet you, Toni.”

“You too.” His hand was warm. My hand was cold.

He walked off the dock as my parents headed down, holding boxes.

I watched him go.

I heard him say hello to my parents; they said hello back, smiled.

My mother put a box down on the dock and hugged me. My father wrapped his arms around both of us. My mother lightly tapped both of my cheeks with both hands, put her widow's peak to mine, and said, “Okay. Now we have things to do, things to get done. No?”

I wiped away tears and kept unpacking, my sisters coming down the dock with boxes, too.

That's what Kozlovskys do. We brush away the tears, and we get on with life. We always have things to do.

* * *

“How are you feeling about the wedding?” I asked Ellie.

“I feel perfectly pleasant and peaceful about it.” Ellie, at her sewing machine, continued to sew white lace around the edges of the light blue fabric. When she was done, she was going to paint blue irises and lily pads on the pillow. “Be one with your life,” she whispered to herself. “Embrace your fear, then let it go floating into the sky.”

“You sound perfectly and pleasantly insane,” Valerie said.

The three of us were at Ellie's house sewing pillows. Some women meet for lunch. Some women go away to Vegas and be naughty. My sisters and I sew pillows and talk, so we call it Pillow Talk.

When we were younger, we sewed pillows to make money in the midst of a long and blisteringly cold and starving winter in Moscow. Then we sewed for our lives; now we sew because that's what we do when we're together.

All the pillows the three of us make during Pillow Talk go to a children's hospital in town, so they have to be extra special. We all work on them at home after our Pillow Talk nights. When we get a bunch, we bag them up, haul them over, sometimes give them out to the kids ourselves, then we go back to Ellie's, have a couple of celebratory vodka straight shots, and make more pillows.

Ellie lives in a two-story blue home in a quiet area on the Willamette River. It's set back from the river about twenty feet. The home was old, so she had the whole thing gutted and had all the walls painted white. That was where the boredom ended.

Ellie loves fabrics. She has floor-to-ceiling window treatments in the most lush, intricate fabrics on every window, all different designs and bright colors that somehow blend. She has taken fabric from India, China, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, etc., and framed it for her walls and used it as furniture slipcovers. The world looks like it landed in her home.

Upstairs she knocked out a wall between the living room and kitchen, so it's one large room, with two bedrooms down the hall and a bathroom. Downstairs she knocked down four walls, so the daylight basement, with two sets of French doors, is completely open. This is where she runs Ellie K's Pillows.

She has four women who work for her. She sews and sells her pillows all over the country. Ellie has a Web site where all of her pillows are pictured. I sometimes get on the Web site to relax myself because the pillows are so creative, fun, funny, bodacious. She also has a page about her, her life, her home, her cats, the river, and her pillows in progress. She's made her business personal, a slice of her life on the river, in the woods. The business grows each year.

“That's it?” Valerie asked. “That's all you want to say, Ellie? I would think we'd get some bridal gushing, some enthusiasm, some wow—wow, I can't wait for the legal bang bang.” Valerie bumped her fists together. Her pillow would have a country scene with white and black chickens that wore red velvet top hats. “Get what I mean?”

“I think we get it, Valerie,” I said. “Since we do have brains.” I was cutting out leaves from many different fabrics from around the world, then I would paste them onto a tree on a three-foot-long blue, rectangular-shaped pillow.

“The wedding planning is going well,” Ellie said, standing up, breathing deep, her hand to her widow's peak, which is what she always does when she's nervous. “Except that Mama and Papa don't like Gino. Family war.”

“Not a war,” I said, choosing my words oh so carefully. “We have ... concerns.”

“Please. Let's not hide behind politeness,” Valerie said. “We think you're making a mistake. Let me spell mistake for you. G.I.N.O.”

“Please stop it, Valerie,” Ellie said. She took another deep breath and chanted, “I don't need a paper bag. I
don't
need a paper bag. I am in control of my lungs, my air, my breathing, my life, and my calm demeanor. I am in control of myself.”

“I'm glad I'm not warring with Mama,” Valerie said. “I don't want to have to deal with her evil eye and curses and muttering. She does mutter a lot. I think she's muttering more the older she gets.”

“And she's swearing more in French,” I said, crossing my legs on the couch. The couch had a slipcover made from fabric from India. Red. Elephants. Gold trim. “Back to the wedding. Ellie, I want you to be excited.”

“I ... am,” Ellie said, chanting once again. “Breathe, Ellie. Relax. Bring the peace of the world unto yourself. You're happy.”

“You're not,” I said.

“You're a stupendously poor liar,” Valerie said. “I would rip you apart on the stand. Like a lion shredding flesh and swallowing it whole. I hope you never commit a murder. In fact, if I went back to being a defense attorney, I wouldn't even let you testify, because you'd incriminate yourself. Spill your guts, Ellie. Tell us the truth.”

Ellie stopped working at the sewing machine, leaned way back in her chair, then came up right. “Gino is ... he's ... I've never met anyone like Gino. He walks into my house and everything lights up, and I light up, he's like electricity, and he's exciting and fun, and we're always doing exciting and fun things and it's entertaining and exciting and fun.”

“I think my cat is entertaining, I'm not going to marry her,” Valerie said.

“I think I've had all the excitement and fun I can take,” I said. “Do you love him?”

Ellie hesitated. That infinitesimal hesitation. “Yes. I do. I wouldn't marry him if I didn't love him.” She then whispered, “Don't get uptight, Ellie, breathe in slowly. Feel your soul. Arrange your aura. Reach for serenity.”

“Ellie, keep sleeping with Gino,” Valerie said. “Have your fun and excitement with a condom attached to his pistol at all times, but fun and excitement does not carry the day. Or the years ahead. I tell ya, I find sexy in faithful and loyal. Somebody who listens. Kai may not light up a room and suck the light right out of it from everyone else, but he shines a light for me. Last night, this is so funny, he brought a flashlight into the bedroom and we got under the covers and—”

“I don't think we need to know about flashlight sex right now,” I said

“Fine,” Valerie said. “But I want you to have this look of total lust and passion on your face whenever you say the word ‘Gino,' and you don't have that, sister.”

“Gino and I have a physical passion together... .” Ellie gave up. She grabbed a paper bag that she had stashed under the emerald green cushion of a chair and started breathing into it. “Capture your inner calm, Ellie. Decide that you are in control. Embrace your harmony... .”

I groaned.

Valerie groaned, too, then tapped the armrest of a chair. The chair had pictures of the Eiffel Tower on it.

Ellie doubled over with the bag, then stood up, pale. “Gino is nice to me. He pays attention to me. He always wants to be together.”

“And what would be wrong with that?” I asked. “Did you want him to head for the mountains screaming when he saw your face?”

“It's a bit ... suffocating. I turn around, he's there. It's leechy. I can't believe I used the word ‘leech' to talk about my fiancé. But he started talking about us and how things will be after the wedding.” She made a wheezing sound.

“Sit down, Ellie, you're making me nervous,” I said. “Now I feel like breathing into a bag.”

“There were things he talked about, like money. I've never told him how much I make. He's told me what he makes, and he makes more than I do, but he wanted to sit down and make a budget and talk about savings, retirement. He said that from now on we should both talk to each other before we make purchases, not the little ones, but medium-sized purchases and the expensive ones.”

“That sounds like a plan to me,” I said.

“I've handled my own money for a long time. And I don't want to sit down and talk about money. I don't want him, or anyone else, to tell me how to spend or save my money. I don't want to have to ask for his permission to go out and buy a new coat or new furniture or if I need something for my business or if I want to go on a trip.”

“Kai and I do that, though, Ellie,” Valerie said. “Not with everything. He buys clothes sometimes. I do, too. We both buy things for the kids and we don't get approval for that from the other person, but we both know the budget, we both know how much we can spend. And I would double vasectomy Kai if he went out and bought a motorcycle or a car without discussing it with me.”

“I know in my head”—
gasp-gasp
—“it's reasonable for Gino to ask that we do that, but I don't like it. It feels controlling to me. It feels like I'm losing my financial independence. I don't want a man, any man, even my husband, telling me how to spend money.

“Gino and I were also talking about family.” She put the bag down, her hands trembling. “And we were talking about, specifically, his mother, who is always complaining about something. Her back hurts. She has migraines. Her feet hurt. She's in her seventies, and Gino jumps to her beck and call.

“I'm glad he loves her, but she can't stand me. I know it's not personal. Gino told me she has never liked any of his girlfriends, but I don't like being around her. His father deadens himself with alcohol each night and checks out. Anyhow, Gino said that when his parents aren't healthy anymore, that he will want them to live with us.”

“Torture. That is akin to torture,” Valerie said.

“It would be like living with a battle-ax and a stoned aardvark,” I said.

“I can't imagine living with his parents. I told him that, too. I told him that if they weren't healthy, they could go to assisted living, that we could be there every day, and he was angry. He said that family is family and he would never put his parents, or our parents, in assisted living.”

She collapsed beside me on the couch, and I put my arm around her. All this bag blowing was making me nervous.

“If I have to live with a woman who hates me and a man who drinks steadily to dim the noise and nagging of his wife, I will lose my mind. It will fly out the window and disappear.”

“Then tell him no, Ellie,” I said. “I couldn't do it, either.”

“I did. We had a fight about it. It was unpleasant.” She put the paper bag over her face again. “I reminded him that I work, full time, at home. Who would take care of them? And he said that wherever we live we'll make sure there's a place for my business in the home, so I could take care of them and check on them during the day.”

I threw up my hands. “So he wants you to give up your time, and your business, to help care for his mother, who hisses at you, and his father, a drunken man, when they're ill.”

“Yes. I think I want to die thinking about it. It's making me feel like I can't breathe.”

“Watching you not be able to breathe is making me feel like I can't breathe,” Valerie said. “I feel light-headed.”

“Ellie, you have to work this out,” I said, fanning my face for more air. “They're older, and they may well need help soon.”

“I know,” she wailed. “I can't, and won't, do it. Gino knows how his mother treats me, and I'm angry that he would even suggest that I take care of her, that he would not understand, or refuse to understand, what her being in my home would do to me, to us.”

“How did it end?” Valerie asked.

“It ended with Gino angry and saying that I'm selfish, that he would help my parents. Am I a terrible person?”

“No,” Valerie and I both said.

“You're saying that you can't live with his parents because of their alarming dysfunction,” I said.

“Because they'll drive your brain out of your skull, and it will fly out the window,” Valerie said.

“I love Gino but not enough to take care of his mother.” Ellie collapsed on the couch, exhausted from her anxiety attack. “Maybe I don't love him enough.”

“Yep. Give me that,” I said, and put the bag over my face and breathed. That helped.

“Hand it over, sista,” Valerie said, swiping the bag and putting it over her face and breathing in. “I think I need a bag for this upcoming trial. The Bartons are psychotic.”

We had a group hug on the couch. Ellie leaned against me and I leaned against Valerie, arms and legs entangled.

“Love you,” we said to each other. “Love you more than Mama's Russian tea cakes.”

* * *

I have three kayaks. Two singles and a tandem two-seater. I keep them in the little house/shelter on my deck. I loved kayaking. Being outside, in nature, was my peace. Being one with the river, sunk down into it, along with the river animals, watching the leaves flutter above me, the sun shine on the water, the wind blowing through my hair ... well, there's nothing like it.

I won't kayak again.

* * *

Going to work downtown, in the
Oregon Standard
's boxy, four-story, concrete and glass building in the middle of the city, was getting harder and harder. Each day I left my tugboat, said good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Quackenbusch, and Dixie the blue heron if I could see her, who reminds me of him, and headed into a full day of crime.