What Happened to My Sister: A Novel (6 page)

Let’s pick up the pace
is pretty much all Momma says for the rest of the day. She don’t even say
ow
when she trips and skins her knee on the gravel right after a huge truck goes by us, whipping up wind that feels real good but almost sucks me into the road. We’ve had three trucks, four cars, and an old pickup pass us since we started. Two of the trucks honked the loudest horns I ever heard but they still kept on going. Momma said cusswords to their taillights.

It takes a million hours for someone to pull over to give us a ride. In the dark it’s hard to see his face. All I know is his name is Eldin.
Eldin Fisk, at your service
, he said when we climbed in. I never been so happy to get in a car as I am to get into Eldin Fisk’s. My legs had started turning into concrete blocks. Momma sets in the backseat with me which is weird but good and Eldin didn’t seem to care where we were setting, so long as we
let the quiet keep going
. He said that a few minutes into the ride.
I hope y’all let the quiet keep going
. When Momma asks if he’d mind if she smoked he said
yes
. I never did meet someone who said
yes
to that question. Somewhere after a sign pointing to a place called Hockabee I must’ve fallen asleep ’cause the next thing I know Momma’s shaking me awake.

“Where we at?” I ask her.

“Shhh,” she says. “Carry that one. No the other one—it’s lighter.”

It feels like we’re in a hurry and I’m trying to get my eyes to stay wide awake but they’re fighting me on it. All I hear are bits and pieces of words between Momma and Eldin Fisk.
Thank you so much
. And
All righty then
. And
Oh you’re so kind to lift that out of the trunk. Please don’t trouble yourself, we’re just fine
. Momma’s talking in the voice she uses with grown-ups. It’s fake but they don’t know any better.

“Caroline, say thank you to the nice man,” she says.

That’s the other thing: when grown-ups are around Momma uses her phony voice
and
she calls me
Caroline. Caroline
sounds more proper. I don’t like it, though. I wish I had any name in the world
other
than Caroline.

“Thank you, sir,” I say.

“Pleasure,” says Eldin Fisk.

He slides back into his car and we watch him until his taillights are two teensy dots.

“Where are we, Momma?”

“We’re on the outskirts of town,” she says, staring at something in the distance. I turn to see what she’s looking at—bright lights all clumped together way up ahead.

“What town?”

“What is this, Twenty Questions?” she says. “Grab hold of your sack and let’s get this show on the road. Here, hike it up like this …”

Miracle Number Four:

Momma’s helping me with stuff she never used to help me with. And she’s being sweet as honey on a pretty girl’s finger. Miss Mary back in Toast used to say that about me. That I was
sweet as honey on a pretty girl’s finger
. She said it to Emma too. She was always real good that way, never wanting Emma to feel left out.

We stand where Eldin Fisk left us, at a corner with street signs making a V on a light post so thick I couldn’t hug it all the way around if I wanted to. I never saw a light this big and tall. Pasted up on it is a peeling sign for a
weight loss program guaranteed to melt the pounds off or your money back
. The only sign I saw up like that
was in Hendersonville and it was for a missing cat named Otis who was
probably hungry
. The sign stayed up awhile, until Ally Bell (who got to skip gym on account of her curvy spine and back brace), until Ally Bell’s daddy came and ripped it off saying it was
high time
we stopped
littering our town
. Ever-one said he was just doing it because he didn’t have any say-so at home on account of his being
henpecked
. Thing is I knew for a fact Ally Bell’s family didn’t have hens. Not a one.

Momma and me look out at all the lights up ahead and then, at the exact same second, we look at each other. Right before she blinks, just for a teensy tiny second, she looks like a little girl. Like she’s my age. It’s like Momma and me both wish someone would come along and say
ever-thing will be okay, just you wait and see
.

Even
I
can tell we’re about to do something big and important. And scary. I feel like saying
Momma, I don’t want to turn the page anymore. Momma, I’m scared
. I wish Emma were here. She wouldn’t have a lick of scared in her. She’d probably be the one to say
ever-thing will be okay just you wait and see
and we’d all know she was lying but hearing the words said out loud sure would be nice right about now.

“Momma?”

We’re both still looking up ahead.

“What?”

“Momma, um, I’m …”

Right when I’m about to tell her I’m too scared to move, Momma says:

“You can talk and walk at the same time, can’t you? Let’s go.”

“But …”

“Your
butt
is what’s gonna get whipped if you don’t get in gear,” she says.

“Momma, what if it’s bad up there?”

She waits a second like she’s really thinking on an answer for my question and then Momma says, “If it’s bad at least it’ll be a different kind than we’re used to and anyway we’ve already been through the worst. I got a feeling our luck’s about to change.”

Miracle Number Five:

Momma smiles. Again.

CHAPTER FOUR

Honor Chaplin Ford

My mother never met a conversation she didn’t like. Nor does she miss an opportunity to act strange. Which she has been doing all morning in spades. It’s not even noon and she’s asked me three times how I’m feeling—as if I had just come down with scarlet fever or something. And now, assured that I am perfectly fine thank you very much, she is having a little too much fun at my expense.

“You’ve been quiet so long it must be some kind of miracle,” I say.

Look at her. Ruth Chaplin. Smiling like the cat that ate the canary, arms crossed, waiting on me to admit she’s right, which she is. But if I say so she will gloat from here to high heaven so I’m trying not to look at her, which is a difficult undertaking since she takes up the whole doorway to the kitchen.

“Well?” Mother says, trying to force the smile off her face.

“You know,
most
mothers would be happy their daughters
wanted to keep them alive and safe,” I say. “But you? I guess you want me to ignore you and let you starve to death when …”

Uh-oh. I slipped up.

“When what?” She pounces on it.

“When, um … I mean when …”

She lets the smile stretch back across her face, turns and waddles into the kitchen.

“Just say it: you’re talking about the Armageddon thing again,” she says, reaching into the icebox with some effort, bringing out a Styrofoam container—one of many packed in so tight it’s a real trick to pull something out without everything tumbling onto the kitchen floor.

“How long does chicken salad keep?” she asks, her nose crinkling up. “This smells funny but didn’t I just make it three days ago? You going south on me already, chicken salad? Come smell this and tell me what you think.”

“First of all, it’s not
the Armageddon thing
, just so you know,” I say. “It’s called Armageddon—just the one word, for one thing. And I don’t think I’ve ever even used it in conversation. What you may be referring to, however, is my Emergency Preparedness Plan …”

“In case of the Armageddon thing,” she says, holding out a forkful of chicken salad for me to taste. “You think it’s still good? Try it.”

“I’ll pass, thank you, and you should too if it smells weird,” I say. “Why do people do that? Who would want to taste something that’s already been declared borderline rotten with a gross smell? Are you listening, Mother? And by the way—”

“Here it is! I knew I had cream cheese in here somewhere,” she says, her arm reappearing with a blob of tinfoil I know used to be rectangular but is now wrapped around what’s left of the Philadelphia cream cheese that’s been in there God knows how long.

“Ha. Lookee here,” she says, holding it up like it’s a trophy. “Were you hiding from me, cream cheese?”

There are two truths in my world, such as it is. One: my mother has a freakish habit of talking to inanimate objects as if they’re people, and two: evidently I must now worry about her poisoning herself. Tonight I’ll clean out the icebox. I don’t care what she’ll say.

“Hey by the way, you never told me what the man from City Hall said.” I change the subject. “I had to get Cricket over to her father’s after ballet class and by the time I got back you were asleep and then it totally slipped my mind. You went to bed awful early last night, come to think of it. You feeling okay?”

“Hand me the paper towels, will you? No, they’re right by the sink. There you go. Thanks,” Mother says.

“Mom, I’m trying to talk to you here,” I say. It is so dang frustrating when she gets all scattered like she is right now. “Did they have any news about the appeal? City Hall, I mean? Can you just slow down a sec? I’ll do that later, Mom. I’ll clean it out. Just leave it and come sit down for a minute before I have to go.”

She appears to be deeply concerned with the shelves in the fridge.

“I take it the news wasn’t good,” I say. “About the National Register I mean.”

She is rubbing the glass shelf so hard I can hear the paper towel squeak with Windex oversaturation. In between wipes she answers me in a mumble like the kind you do in the shower when you’re rehearsing an answer to something troublesome. Fragments come first.

“… short memory …,” then “… after all this family’s done …,” followed by “… heartless …”

“Tell me,” I say.

“He says we lost the appeal,” she says, sighing. I watch her
enormous back jiggle with even the smallest arm movement. “He says we fought the good fight and I should be proud about how far I got. Something like that.”

“You should be proud about how far you got?” I say.

Now her whole body is rippling from the strength of her vigorous cleaning.

“That’s what he said. He said most people would not have reached the courts but because our family is important to the city of Hartsville—that’s exactly what he said,
important to the city of Hartsville
—and because we have been a tourist destination, they agreed to hear the case.”

She pauses in her cleaning long enough to reveal what’s really been gnawing at her.

“The thing I don’t understand,” she says, “is why, if we’re so dang important, they can’t just go on and list this house in the National Register and be done with it. He said Uncle Charles was an icon—an icon!—but he was not
an American of historical significance
. Can you believe the nerve? The
audacity
? He said such hateful things, you can’t imagine. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg compared to what else he said. I wanted to reach across the table and strangle him. I wanted to ask him if he liked going to the movies. I wanted him to say yes and then I would have told him he had Mr. Charles Chaplin to thank for enabling him to be entertained by moving pictures all these years. He probably wouldn’t know
The Kid
from
Star Wars
, though, so I guess it’s just as well I sipped my tea and kept my mouth shut. Chaplins take the high road, you know. I’m just glad your father wasn’t here to witness it, God rest his soul. Your father—Oh my Lord, your father would have spread him on a cracker and had him for lunch. Your daddy wasn’t a Chaplin by blood but he was by marriage and he took as much pride in it as I did. Heck, I used to think he was more proud of it than me, the way he’d go on and on. Why else would he let me keep my maiden name like I did? That kind of
thing wasn’t done back then, you know. Now, a’course, it’s all you see: hyphen this, hyphen that, kids not having the same last names as both their parents is common now but back then no Southern man worth his salt would’ve seen fit to have a wife who kept her family name. We were trendsetters and we didn’t even know it! But there he was, that horrid man from City Hall, just sitting there on the living room couch helping himself to a
second
piece of almond pound cake, telling me there wasn’t anything more I could do to get the house listed in the Register. Boy, did I have to bite my tongue. Because Chaplins always take the high road.”

“I know, Mom, I know.
Chaplins always take the high road
. I’ve heard it all my life,” I say with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Mom. I know how much that meant to you.”

“It meant more than you know, I’ll tell you that much.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I spot the clock on the microwave. “Oh good Lord, it’s eleven forty-five? But my watch says— Oh, great. Just perfect. My watch is officially past the point of no return. It says it’s ten oh five. I’ve got to leave to pick up Cricket from school in ten minutes. Listen, Mom? I’m putting the knapsack back downstairs in the basement by the laundry table where it used to be, okay? I’ve updated it and added some new things so now it’s all set.”

“Windex, you are running me ragged,” she says, turning back to her scrubbing. Somehow she’s managed to fit her whole head between the milk carton and a Tupperware containing yet another mystery substance. “Honey, can you get the 409 out from under the sink and hand it to me before you go? Windex, you’re letting me down, honey, so I’ve got to go to the big guns!”

I still haven’t gotten used to the smell snaking out from under the sink. I hold my breath when I open the cabinet door but the smell above the sink is nothing compared to the wallop down below. It’s so sickening I swear I can taste it.

“Mom, we have
got
to do something about this smell—it’s getting worse by the minute. Holy shit!”

“Language,” she says, her voice hollow from inside cold storage.

“Good Lord, it’s a mess down here. I thought the plumber was coming on Monday? We called about this leak weeks ago,” I say. I come up for air, then go back down for another look. “Oh my God, the cabinets are rotted out they’re so wet. Here’s the 409. The mold’s spread across the entire space. You can die from black mold, Mom, you know that? We’re going to have to rip that whole cabinet out. I bet that’s what’s got to happen.”