Three Sisters

Three Sisters—Mazer, Norma Fox.

Three Sisters – Mazer, Norma Fox.

One.

Sisters. Her sisters. Always her sisters. Her first memory: a sister, holding her by the hand, pulling her down the street. “Come on, baby.” And this memory and all the memories pull her down the years. There are three of them and they are each three years apart. They are Liz, Tobi, and herself, Karen. They are twenty-one, eighteen, and fifteen.

Twenty-one works. Eighteen goes to college. Fifteen to high school. There are still times when they get together, sprawl on Liz’s bed, eat popcorn and apples, and talk half the night. Tobi, middle sister, will argue about anything. Liz sits cross-legged, calm, a golden Buddha. Karen looks from one to the other, excited by the three of them being together.

Their mother pokes her head in the door. “What are you girls talking about so long?” She smiles at them as if to say, “Can’t I join you?” They yawn and say harmless things about the weather. She leaves and Tobi raises a finger for silence until they’re sure

they’re alone. Then they start again. “Mom doesn’t have any women friends,” Liz says.

One of the sisters’ favorite things is analyzing their parents: their relationship, their characters, their failings. Their mother is a librarian, their father a dentist; the sisters agree that these are the safe professions, nothing risky, nothing really exciting or creative. They agree that their parents are strange: On the one hand, they each go their own way; on the other, they’re close to one another. Too close?

“They love us, sure,” Tobi says, “but you can tell they’re more important to each other. Dad turns to Mom for everything.”

“I don’t think that’s so bad,” Liz says.

“No, he can’t even buy a pair of socks without-”

“But that’s so touching, actually.”

Tobi gags. “Save me from a man like that.”

Karen wants to contribute to this. “You know, they never let us hear them fight.”

Tobi’s eyebrows draw together. “I always wanted them, Mom especially, to pay more attention to me.”

“How about Dad?” Karen says.

“He’s sorta sweet.” Liz rocks back and forth, pats the top of her head, hums. Tobi and Karen snicker. Dad to a T. In the office he’s Mr. Crisp, wears whites, probes his patients’ mouths with pink hands and shining fingernails. At home, though, it’s baggy pants, shirts with missing buttons. At the table, he” invariably tips back in his chair, patting the bald spot on his head, humming to himself. Lost in his own space.

“All his life he’s been in training to be a character,” Tobi says.

Karen wishes she’d said that.

“And considering Grandma,” Tobi goes on, “it’s no wonder!”

“Come on,” Liz says in her slow drawl, “we’re not such a baaad family. You only have to look at other families—”

“Too true,” Tobi rushes in. “The junk that goes on! I’m not talking Mickey Mouse stuff. I mean really terrible things. Beatings. Incest. Did you see that story in the paper about the man who kept his daughter locked in a box?”

Karen thinks how intense Tobi is, how deeply Tobi feels everything. Is she intense? Does she feel things enough?

“I’m not talking room,” Tobi says. “I mean an actual box. For six years he kept her in a box. She couldn’t walk when the police found her.”

Liz shudders, taps her lips. Karen bends toward her. Is a poem coming?

Liz is premier, the first, the oldest, the kindest, the keeper of the peace. Liz Louise Freed. Presently a poet. A round, freckled face; a long, rounded body; long, round arms; long, round legs. Beautiful, round Liz. The freckles spread from her face to her neck, over her breasts to her waist. Then they end. She wears turtlenecks under her sweaters in winter and turns pale if you mention her freckles. One of Liz’s poems:

Half giraffe is she

Behind the veil, blinks and blinks.

Eye of the morning

Eye of the night, dark night.

Half queen is she

Her royal double progress

Unseen.

“It’s the end I don’t get,” Tobi had said.

Liz only smiled. She won’t explain her poems. Years ago, though, they were easier to understand. Karen still remembers a poem Liz wrote for one of her birthdays.

Five is a funny age to be.

Five thinks it’s smart.

Five thinks it’s awfully wise.

Then you get to be six

And, whoops, you open your eyes!

So you’re six, I say. You’re six today. You’re six, good cheer! You’re six, that’s really fine. You’re six—want a glass of wine?

It was Liz who gave Karen a journal for her eighth birthday, an oversized book, with a gray striped cloth cover and thin red lines down each page. On the cover, in big gold letters, .

The first thing Karen wrote: “Tobi and me to the movies. She puts on eyeshadow in the ladies’ room. We buy M&Ms.”

The next thing: “Today, saw a dead pigeon dead in the road. A horrible sick sight.”

And after that: “Liz is beautiful, kind, and nice. I do love her freckles. Tobi to the movies with her

girl friend. I do hate her. She snores at night.”

She decided to give her journal a name. Liz suggested Celeste. “It means heavenly. It’s one of my favorite names.”

Karen felt Celeste was one of her favorite names, too. “Dear Celeste, today Tobi says I run like a duck. I sock her once. She socks me three times.” “Dear Celeste, spaghetti with disgusting clams again for supper.” “Dear Celeste, Franklin Hocker comes up to me in the market and says ha ha boobs and looks at mine. What for, Tobi says, you don’t have any.”

After that, a long silence. Now and then, over the years she’d take the journal out of her desk, write in it for a few days, then forget it again. Liz was the writer in the family. Liz wrote in her journal every day. She had a desk drawer full of journals. No one went near that drawer on pain of death. No, not death. Tobi would kill you for doing something wrong. Liz would excommunicate you.’

Since Liz had become a dedicated poet and quit her full-time job in an ad agency, she wore overalls instead of skirts, worked half-time in a bakery, and spent hours in her room writing.

“All that time alone is softening your brain,” Tobi said. “Why do you speak so slowly? You sound like you’re pulling taffy.”

It was true, Liz’s speech had slowed down like a faulty record. And not only that, sometimes they caught Liz watching them as if they were birds in the zoo.

“What are we, your raw material?” Tobi said. Liz didn’t deny it.

Their father had wanted Liz to go to dental school,

follow in his footsteps. “I’m sorry, Dad,” Liz said, sounding genuinely regretful. “Maybe if I don’t make it as a poet?” Meanwhile she kept scraps of paper in her pockets and scribbled mysterious phrases with a tiny stub of pencil.

After Liz, came Tobi. If her sisters were desserts, Karen thought, Liz would be cool pineapple sherbet; Tobi would be dark bittersweet chocolate.

Tobi Rachel Freed. The story of Tobi’s life: She wants what she wants when she wants it—and no waiting! Tobi’s on the run, in every way. She’s thin as a whip, runs four miles every morning before she goes to classes, works for the city directory, wants to do something significant with her life; her goal right now is to be a speech therapist. She broods that she’s not doing enough with each day. “I sleep too much,” she says, and sets her alarm clock for half an hour earlier.

She’s not pretty the way Liz is, but there’s something about her that makes people turn and look again. Karen has seen it happen. But don’t try to tell Tobi that. “I’m so funny-looking. These teeth! You’d think Dad could do something.” Tobi thinks her front teeth are too big, tries not to laugh, and when she does, covers her mouth. When Karen was a baby, Tobi bit her with those big teeth two or three times. She says now, when Karen brings it up, “How could I help myself? You looked so plump and juicy. Like a nice fat turkey leg.” That hurts. Karen is always on the verge of dieting. “Besides,” Tobi says, “I was probably hungry, was all. No mean intentions, dear sister.”

Dear sister, indeed. How come Tobi sometimes

still looks at her that same way? When Tobi is mad at her, all Karen can see are Tobi’s teeth, her big big white teeth.

And Karen, the third of the Freed girls. The last. Following behind Liz and Tobi through every grade in school, she was never just Karen Elizabeth Freed, but “Liz Freed’s youngest sister” or “Tobi Freed’s other sister.” That’s why Karen is greeted at the beginning of every semester with smiles and asked if she’s going to keep up the Freed standards (probably not), if she’s going to be half as good a student as Liz (don’t think so), and if “we” have another candidate for track team, like Tobi? Karen’s favorite teacher is always the new teacher who never knew either of her sisters.

Once—she must have been no more than seven—Liz woke her in the middle of the night. Tobi was there, too. “Get up,” Tobi said. “Get dressed. Be quiet. Stop yawning. We’re going someplace. Don’t ask so many questions.”

They tiptoed past their parents’ room, Karen held her breath, her father snored. Tobi began to giggle, they ran down the stairs and out of the house, not quiet at all. “We’re going to see the sun rise,” Liz said. They jostled each other down the street, the air was sharp in their lungs. Liz led the way with the flashlight. On a muddy hill above the Catholic cemetery, Tobi knelt, turning to the east. A wind blew the last stars out.

Karen sneezed. “Shh!” Tobi said. “Kneel!” The sky clouded and a spatter of rain fell. Karen’s knees hurt. The rain became serious. “Even though you don’t see it,” Tobi said, “the sun is rising and we

are paying homage.” She bent over, throwing out her arms. “Sun, sun, we honor you, sun.” Liz snickered and Tobi was angry. “What’s so funny, Miz Liz!” They went home, hair wet, knees muddy, and crowded into the bathroom together to pee and take showers.

Two.

There’s a picture in the tin box where they keep their family snapshots. Liz, wearing shorts and a striped shirt, stands between Karen and Tobi, who are also wearing shorts and striped shirts. Their arms are linked, they are looking into the camera (probably held by their father) and each one of them is making a face. Liz’s face, naturally, is the mildest; she’s wrinkled up her nose, puffed out her lips. Tobi’s face is the most frightening—her eyes are rolled up into her head and she’s somehow managed to twist her features all out of shape. Karen, who’s about seven, is sticking out her tongue and crossing her eyes, a talent she was proud of at that age. Since the picture is in black and white, it’s not at first apparent that their striped shirts are exactly alike. Black and red stripes. Their Katoli shirts. Their Katoli faces.

Karen-Tobi-Liz, the Katoli, their three names knotted together. And what, Karen used to think, if they had called themselves The Litoka? Then she

would have been last again. As usual. As always!

Their slogan: The Katoli For Good or Evil. Good had been tremendously boring things like raking leaves or cleaning up a bathroom. Evil had been much better. Salt in the sugar bowl. Opening their parents’ mail. Stealing quarters from the change jar in the kitchen. Knotting the living room curtains.

The Katoli didn’t last nearly long enough for Karen. Around the time she was ten or so, things changed. There were her sisters, teenish and cool, and there was she, the fool kid. Still hoping her sisters would sleep in her room. Still waiting for them to have one of their satisfying fights over which one loved her the most. (“I do! … No, I do! … I took care of her when she was a baby! … Oh, I suppose it wasn’t me who spent a whole summer wheeling her in her little stroller?”)

Suddenly it was all gone. She plodded to school, telling herself she could live. She made a point of being jolly with her friends, but at home, her sisters made faces about her to each other and said, “What’s the matter with Karen? She’s sooo sensitive.” Always getting upset over little things, they said. Trifles! Tiny nothings, like Liz and Tobi closing a door in her face (“No, Karen, you can’t come in now”) or whispering together (“Ka-ren, this conversation is not for you”) or going out with each other to have a wonderful time without her. (“Look, you’re just too young.”)

It was in that period that she had a short career as an obsessive.

She ate nothing but cold cereal and canned beets for breakfast, said the word harmony as often as possible (as in, “Yes, my bed is made, be of good

harmony”), counted every street light she passed, and wore only red socks and green sweaters.

Also, she dreamed hard enough about the family moving someplace else (a new start in life, a new Karen, her sisters enchanted and thus restored to her) to make it seem real. She considered Alaska, but settled on Mexico. She liked heat. Phase One was to give away things she didn’t really need to take with her. She started by donating her Nancy Drews to a girl named Lori.

Lori was impressed. “I’ll never forget you, Karen. Even if you live in Mexico forever. You’re the most wonderful, generous person in the entire universe.” Karen thought so, too, until talking to her mother one day, she said, “Mexico…” and her mother said, “Sweetie, Mexico? Where in the world—?” She laughed. “I wouldn’t mind, but we could never pry your father away from his practice.”