Three Sisters (15 page)

Liz, this isn’t easy to say, but you must have noticed something is wrong. We can’t go on deceiving you. We? Who’s we? Oh, I know in your heart of hearts you know already. Scott and I… .

The night before, when Scott had called, Karen answered the phone. “Hi, Karen,” he’d said, “is Lizzie bird there?”

“Hold on.” Hi, Karen? Was that all he had to say to her?

And what was this Lizzie bird stuff? When had he started that kind of cutesy talk? Liz detested being called Lizzie. But maybe there was a method to his cuteness. Make Liz crazy by calling her names she hated. Lizzie bird, Lizzie lizard, bizzy Lizzie. Lizzie, Laaazy, louzy blouzy frowzy Lizzy. She’d throw his engaged to be engaged ring in his face. We’re through. No, I won’t change my mind. Get out! Goodbye!

Then he and Karen would hop in his truck, the dogs would ride in back, and all four of them would drive off together. They’d probably keep going until they got to California, where they’d eat oranges off the trees and swim in the ocean. Happy together forever.

“I suppose exams are coming, Karen?… Karen?”

She sat up. “Oh. Not yet, Grandma, not till the end of June. Six more weeks.”

“Are you prepared?”

“I hope so.”

Her grandmother looked over her shoulder. “Don’t hope for things, Karen. Make them happen. Just do it.”

At home on the patio, her grandmother sat upright on a deck chair, fanning herself with a Japanese fan. “It’s terribly hot.” Karen brought her lemonade, ice water, a peeled cold peach. “Is that what you call peeling, dear? I can’t eat that skin, it’s indigestible.” She peeled the peach again with the fruit knife, then bit into it. Her teeth were white and strong. “I’ve never lost a single tooth.”

Karen’s mother came out on the patio. “Mother Freed, are you comfortable?”

“Terribly hot. A bit cooler here than my apartment… .”

“Yes … unseasonable. Would you like a part of the Sunday paper?”

Karen lay in the grass. Their voices came to her distantly, a soothing hum. How odd to be old like Grandma, to be half old like her mother. Sometimes she felt sick with being young, it hurt so much, but she didn’t want ever to be so old that she talked about nothing but weather and the skin on peaches.

Later, it began raining. Her parents went to a concert. Tobi had been out all day. Liz was getting ready to go out with Scott. Karen went upstairs, dragged the phone into her room, turned on the radio, and called Marisa. “Hi, I’m depressed.”

“I am, too. You go first.”

“No, you.”

“Are you sure, Karen? I can wait-”

“No, I can, too.”

“I’m fighting with my parents. I want to take a job this summer. You’re right, I don’t know anything about work—”

“You still remember that! I shouldn’t have said it.”

“No, I’m glad you did. Now here’s the problem. If I work, it upsets my parents’ summer plans. They want to travel. If I get a job, they think they have to stay home. I told them I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“It’s not easy getting a job.”

“Davey says maybe he can help me.”

“Good.” Karen kicked her legs in time to the music. Hardly a twinge now when she heard Davey’s name.

“Your turn,” Marisa said.

“Oh, it’s just everything. My grandmother was over today. They’re all out now, except Liz, and she’s going out, too.”

“With that cute guy in the red truck?”

“Right. Scott.”

Did Marisa pick up on something in her voice, in the way she’d hesitated over his name? “Karen, you still haven’t told me who the new love of your life is.”

“I know.” Karen lay on her back, pedaling her legs in the air, and thought about telling Marisa. It would be good and bad. Good, because it would be a relief to tell someone what had happened. Bad, because then the memory of what had happened wouldn’t be just hers.

“What does his name begin with?”

“Can’t you guessss?” she said, deliberately drawing out the s sound. If Marisa guessed, she wouldn’t deny it.

“Oh, give me a little hint, Karen.”

Karen pedaled harder. And a one! and a two! and a one! and a two! and a three! … Good for the thigh muscles. “No, no. If I tell you anything, you’ll guess.” She hissed out the word.

Guess, Marisa, guess. No, never mind, I’ll tell you. It’s Scott. He kissed me.

“You should tell me. I’m your best friend.”

I was in his apartment. On his bed.

“So you’re not going to tell?”

“Oh, I might… one of these days.”

Downstairs, the doorbell chimed.

“Karen, get it, please,” Liz yelled.

“Have to go, Marisa, see you in school.”

The doorbell chimed again. It was undoubtedly Scott. She didn’t want to see him. Well, yes, she did, but not this way, not coming for Liz. Let Liz answer the door herself. She turned up her radio from loud to deafening.

“Karen,” Liz screamed.

Her legs flopped to the floor. She lay there another moment. What was it her grandmother had said? Something about making things happen. The kiss—had she made that happen? Or had he? Or had it just happened? She went into the hall. Lightning flashed green through the little window.

“Karen!” Liz banged open the bathroom door. She had on a white summer dress, the blue sash dangling. She was barefooted, brushing her hair. “Oh, there you are. You are going. Okay.”

Karen’s hand drifted over the banister. Why should

she open the door if Scott was here to see Liz? What was she, Norman the doorman?

Make things happen. Grandma, that’s like telling a Martian to make a chocolate cake. Just do it. How? What’s the secret?

The doorbell chimed a third time. Liz rushed past her, shoeless. Her freckles stood out like stars all over her face. “You’re sleepwalking tonight. Scott’ll drown out there.”

Karen sat down on the stairs.

“Hi, love,” Liz said, below her, “come on in.”

“Mmm, you look sweet.” Scott, in the hall. Kiss kiss, like birds pecking. His dark, curly hair was damp. He had shaved off his sick beard. There was a bit of tissue stuck to his skin and he wore a gold necklace.

“I’ll be a moment more,” Liz said. She went up the stairs, past Karen, down the hall.

Karen sat still, looking down at Scott. He hadn’t noticed her.

He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, stuck one in his mouth, then put it back into the pack. Did he remember that Karen had taken the cigarette from his mouth, put it into her mouth? He had said, You’ll get my germs, sweetie. She had said, I’m not afraid.

No, that wasn’t the way it happened. She had just made that up. What if she had made up everything? What if nothing had happened, none of it? Not her visit. Not being on the bed with him. Not the kiss.

He looked up and saw her. He walked to the stairs. One foot on the bottom step, hands in his pockets. “Hi. How are you?”

“Fine.” As you can see. Why do you ask? Is something wrong with your eyes?

“Well, I’m all recovered.”

“Uh-huh.” Thrilled to hear it.

“Harold and Alfred say hello.”

“Yeah?” Bla bla bla.

“Quiet tonight, aren’t you?”

“Uh-huh.” I hate you, Scott.

“Cat got your tongue?”

She thought about sticking out her tongue. How childish!

“So! How are you?”

The same way I was the last time you asked me.

“Liz and I are going to a movie.”

“She told me.” She was almost nauseous with anger. What a stupid conversation.

Liz came running down the stairs. “Here I am. We’re taking my car, aren’t we?” She got her car keys from the basket, pulled on a light jacket. Scott opened the door.

“See you later, Karen.” The door slammed.

She sat there for a long time, biting her fists.

The rain increased. Thunder rattled the windows. Could lightning strike through the panes? Pane. Pain. She held her stomach. Liz and Scott in the car … sitting close to each other. The windshield wipers frantically beating, rain tapping on the little roof. Liz had pulled over to wait out the storm … so cozy in the car … like a little house. They’d kiss. Kiss and kiss and kiss. Not one tiny, measly kiss that lasted only a single moment, but long kisses, kiss after kiss, their arms wound around each other, making love with the rain streaming down the windows.

Twenty-five

The rain streamed down Karen’s neck. “Tobi, come on, Tobi,” she screamed. Tobi was coming over the top of the last hill, on the heels of a tall, fat girl in tight purple shorts. Right beside Karen, her mother and Jason were screaming their heads off, too. The rain had started about halfway into the ten-mile run sponsored by the Muscular Dystrophy Association. “They’re raising funds for research,” Tobi had said. “Want to sponsor me? A dollar a mile.”

“Muscular dystrophy? That doesn’t have anything to do with speech pathology,” her mother had said.

“It’s a good cause,” Tobi had said. “And it’s about time I entered a race. I need a challenge.”

“You need a challenge, sweetie, the way a frog needs a raincoat.”

Tobi came in tenth in a field of one hundred fifty. “Not bad,” she said later, when the four of them stopped in the Drumlins Country Club for brunch.

She was still wearing her running shorts, with a hooded sweat shirt pulled over her T-shirt. Her hair was curly from the rain, which had stopped as suddenly as it started.

“Better than not bad, toots,” Jason said. “That’s great. Isn’t that great, Sylvia?”

“I think so, Jason.” Karen’s mother nodded and smiled. Everyone was nodding and smiling at everyone else—at least Jason and her mother were doing their share. When Jason smiled he showed a gold tooth, which gave him the look of a pirate. Her mother’s smile struck Karen as a touch too big, a touch too sweet. She was trying, but maybe trying too hard, to show Tobi that she accepted Jason. Karen wondered who her mother was kidding. Tobi? Or herself?

“Hey, how many people could even run ten miles?” Jason said.

“At least a hundred and fifty,” Karen said.

Jason snapped his fingers, laughed, pointed at her, as if she’d said something really clever.

He was on his good behavior. Being a model person. Showing that he, too, could be a nice, ordinary human being. He had held the chair out for her mother, remembered Karen’s name, and said brunch was his treat and he recommended the strawberry waffles topped with whipped cream.

But the strain of being ordinary and nice must have gotten to Jason. And the strain of smiling so much and being so bland must have kicked her mother over the edge. “How old are your children, Jason?” her mother suddenly said.

“Fourteen and eleven, Sylvia.” He gleamed his gold tooth at her.

“Fourteen and eleven,” she repeated. “And the fourteen year old is the—girl?”

“Right.”

Her mother looked down at her waffle, smiling bemusedly. “What does that remind me of? Oh, I know. Tobi, remember when you baby-sat for that Muselli girl? What was her name?”

“You mean Lydia Muselli?” Tobi said. “What about her?”

“Remember—it was so funny. They called you up for New Year’s Eve and asked you to baby-sit? You were about fourteen then, yourself. And when you came home, you just burst into my room and said, ‘Mom! I’m only two years older than Lydia and she’s four inches taller than I am and twice as smart, and I was supposed to be baby-sitting her!’ “

“I don’t remember that,” Tobi said.

The tension at the table was so thick it could have been beaten and used as a whipped cream substitute. Except, Karen thought, feeling the real stuff gurgling in her stomach, tension probably tasted like rotten eggs.

“No?” her mother said. “That’s funny. We decided maybe they had wanted Liz and gotten mixed up.”

“I don’t remember any of that,” Tobi said. “What’s the point, anyway?”

Karen glanced at Jason. He was leaning back, his arms crossed over his massive chest, his eyes on her mother, his lips and the side of his nose lifted in a mocking, knowing expression.

“Just thinking about ages,” her mother said. “People’s ages. Just thinking,” she said quietly, “that when Jason’s daughter was born, you were all of

four years old, Tobi. Just thinking how you and Karen used to play together and there’s—what?—something over three years between you? Actually closer to four years, isn’t it?”

Tobi flushed as red as the moment she had crossed the finish line.

“Tobi -Jason—” her mother said. “Have you two thought—”

“We’ve thought, Mom. We’ve thought about lots of things, surprising as it may seem to you. I thought you told me—” She seemed to become inarticulate with rage and pushed back her chair.

“Tobi—”

“You told me! You said—oh, what’s the point! I can’t talk to you!”

“Tobi, I’m just—”

“Nooo!” She covered her ears.

That was the moment when Karen noticed that tension smelled like rotten eggs, too.

It was Jason who smoothed things over. He walked away from the table with Tobi, his arm around her shoulder. They stood by the window that looked out on the golf course, his head bent toward hers, talking.

“Oh. Oh. Oh,” Karen’s mother said. She rubbed her forehead, laughed, although she looked ready to cry. “I’m stupid. Sometimes I’m stupid.”

“Mom—”

“What’s the matter with me, Karen?”

“I guess you’re worried about Tobi.”

“But I told myself, Don’t fight her! You don’t lock horns with Tobi. You’ve got to give her time. She’ll figure things out. I’m sure she’s going to see that he’s too old for her. Underneath she’s sensible,

I know she is, she’s not self-destructive.”

“I don’t like him, either,” Karen said.

Her mother looked up. “Honestly, I don’t know what I feel about him, except he’s too old. Tobi’s just—she’s so tender,” her mother said intensely. “She acts tough, but underneath she’s so tender. I’m so afraid she’s going to be hurt.” She started crying, then stopped, wiping her eyes quickly as Tobi and Jason came toward the table.

They sat down and somehow they all managed to make conversation until they’d finished eating.

Later on, what stayed with Karen was the thought that when Tobi wanted something, she went out and did something about it. She fought for it. She made it happen.