The Sisters Hemingway

by Annie England Noblin

  “Ow!” Pfeiffer exclaimed. “Ow, shit!”

  There was blood on Pfeiffer’s hands when she finally pulled them away from her face, just in time for the door to swing open and for a face to be staring back at them, the lines in his face cavernous, his eyes filled with equal parts worry and confusion. “Pfeiffer? Martha?” the man asked, cocking his head to one side. Then, noticing the blood pouring out of Pfeiffer’s nose, he said, “Lord have mercy, child! What have you done?”

  “We thought you were a robber,” Pfeiffer said through gritted teeth.

  “Or a raccoon,” Martha replied, shrugging when her sister shot her a look.

  “We best get you downstairs,” the man said, taking Pfeiffer by the arm and leading her down the steps. “There are some clean washrags in the kitchen.”

  Rufus Crowley was the caretaker at the James farm. He’d been there ever since forever, and there weren’t many memories on the farm that didn’t involve him. He’d been old back then, and Pfeiffer and Martha used to take bets on how old he was and in what year he would die, much to the vexation of their eldest sister, Hadley.

  “You shouldn’t talk like that,” Hadley would say. “Old Crow hears everything, you know. You wouldn’t want for him to put a curse on you.”

  The rumor around Cold River was that Rufus Crowley’s mother had been a witch, just as her mother before her, and her mother before her. The Crowleys lived on the farthest outskirts of town, past even the clannish and unpredictable Cranwell family, in a clapboard shack at the river’s edge. Townsfolk often went to Mother Crowley for advice and healing medicine, and for advice on any troubles they were too embarrassed to discuss in the company of each other. Of course, these were just stories now, as she’d passed on years and years before any of the girls were born, leaving her only son, a man everyone called “Old Crow,” even when he’d been a young man.

  Martha, however, suspected that Old Crow had never, ever been young. Their mother hadn’t liked that nickname, and made them call him “Mr. Crowley” in her presence, although they’d all called him “Old Crow” behind her back. Good-natured and kind, Old Crow never seemed to mind.

  “Let me have a look at it,” Crowley said, easing Pfeiffer down into one of the cracking kitchen chairs.

  “Is her nose broken?” Martha asked.

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Pfeiffer asked, a single trail of blood sliding down from her nose and into her mouth so that her teeth showed the faintest hint of red when she spoke.

  “I would not,” Martha protested, although she was trying desperately to hide a smile. She didn’t relish that her sister was hurt, not at all, but she had to admit that seeing Pfeiffer even the slightest bit undone did give her more pleasure than it should have.

  “Oh, it’s not as bad as all that,” Crowley replied, dabbing at Pfeiffer’s nose with a wet rag. “It ain’t broken. Just a bit busted.”

  “What’s the difference?” Pfeiffer asked, her eyes closed in an attempt to ward off the throbbing she was beginning to feel now that the shock was wearing off.

  “Won’t be needin’ no doctor,” Crowley replied. “Though you may have a couple of shiners in the mornin’ below them eyes.”

  “Great.”

  “I really am sorry,” Martha offered, reaching out to touch her sister on the arm, but she jerked away from her grasp. “I didn’t mean to. I swear.”

  “Of course ya didn’t,” Crowley agreed. “What are you two doing here, anyway? Nobody told me you was comin’.”

  “Alice Beacon called Hadley,” Martha replied. “She said the family night was tonight, and I guess the funeral is tomorrow morning.”

  Crowley nodded, handing over the cloth to Pfeiffer. “Mrs. Beacon and the ladies of the auxiliary planned the whole thing,” he said. “I reckon your aunt saw fit to leave it to them in the end.”

  For a moment, Martha saw a flicker of hurt cross through Crowley’s eyes. He and Aunt Bea had been friends since they were children. “Were you around?” she asked. “To help her?”

  Again, Crowley nodded. “I were,” he said. “She had trouble getting around the last few years.”

  “She never told us,” Pfeiffer replied.

  “She wouldn’t have wanted to bother ya none,” Crow said. “You know how she was.”

  Both Pfeiffer and Martha knew how their aunt was. Technically, Aunt Bea was their great-aunt, the younger sister of their grandfather. They hadn’t known her as children. Their mother told them that she’d run away from home at seventeen and never come back. She told them something traumatizing must’ve happened to her, because she stopped speaking, to anyone, after she left. In fact, according to their mother, their aunt never spoke to another living soul again. The sisters never believed her, but when she arrived on their doorstep the day after their mother and sister were killed in the storm, they found out she’d been right. Bea never said a word to them, but she was always able to make her point clear. The social worker referred to it as “selective mutism,” as she’d been able to speak at one point in her life and for some reason made the choice to be silent. They were told that it was severe anxiety that kept their aunt from talking, but Martha always thought it might be something else. Despite this, she was their only surviving family, and without her, she and Pfeiffer would have been sent to foster care. Martha was grateful to her for keeping the sisters together.

  Martha blinked, pushing away these thoughts, and looked to Pfeiffer for what to say. She wished Hadley were there. She always knew what to say in situations such as these. She would have found a kind word to say about their dead aunt, instead of standing there awkwardly like the two of them were doing, staring at Crowley and the lines on his face.

  “I’m sorry the place looks as shabby as it does,” Crowley continued when both women remained silent. “Your aunt wouldn’t let me do much, save for a bit of work here and there.”

  “She always cared so much about keeping the place looking nice,” Pfeiffer replied, still holding the cloth to her nose.

  “It was hard on her without any of you youngin’s here to help her,” Crowley said. “She had rheumatoid arthritis, and it hurt her to walk.”

  “She could have told us,” Martha replied.

  “No, she couldn’t,” Crowley said.

  “You know what I mean,” Martha replied. “She could have written us a letter or something. We would have come home if she needed help.”

  “Would ya?”

  Martha and Pfeiffer shared a look. It wasn’t like they would have refused. They’d loved their aunt. She’d come and cared for them at a time in their lives when they were utterly alone. But their years of being scared little girls were over the second they left Cold River. Besides, their aunt’s letters put off any offers to visit. In them, she often wrote that she wanted the girls to live their lives away from the farm, away from Cold River. She wouldn’t visit them, and they didn’t visit her. That was the way things were, and Martha never thought to question it. She knew what Crowley meant, however. Neither of them—neither she nor her sister—had any desire to come back to Cold River. It was where they were from, but it hadn’t been home in a long time.

  “Is anybody up here?” came a new voice from the other end of the hallway.

  All three of them turned to stare at the woman before them, silhouetted in the doorframe, slim and perfect. She looked as if she’d materialized out of the beams of light coming in through the dust-covered windows rather than like a road-weary traveler. Her clothes were not rumpled like Martha’s. Her hair was not undone and frizzy like Pfeiffer’s.

  “Hadley!” Martha exclaimed. “When did you get here?”

  “Just now,” Hadley replied. “What happened?”

  Pfeiffer removed the cloth from her nose and stood up. “Martha happened,” she said.

  Martha wasn’t sure if she should reach out and hug her oldest sister. Instead, she got caught halfway between a hug and handshake and stood there awkwardly for a few seconds before pulling he
r hand back down to her side and averting her gaze.

  Hadley shot a quizzical look at her youngest sister but said nothing. Instead, she turned her attention to Crowley. “I’m glad to know you’ve been here taking care of the place,” she said. “The last time I got a letter from Aunt Bea, she said you were absolutely invaluable to her.”

  Crowley stood up a little straighter. “I did what I could, Miss Hadley.”

  “She did lead me to believe things were in better shape than they are,” Hadley admitted. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Well,” Crowley said, backing away from the three women slowly as if he were a lone, fat chicken and the sisters were cats licking their lips and ready to pounce. “I’d better go and get meself cleaned up before the family night tonight.”

  “At Macri’s?” Hadley asked. “Six o’clock, right?”

  “The only funeral home in town,” Crowley replied, giving her a rare smile. “I reckon I’ll be seeing y’all there.”

  It wasn’t a question, more of a command, and Old Crow took his leave, bounding down the stairs, muttering to himself the litanies of a man who was happy to have made his escape.

  Chapter 4

  Hadley

  HADLEY ASSUMED SHE WOULD BE THE FIRST TO ARRIVE AT the house, as she had been first in birth and in nearly everything else in her life since. Of course, she knew Mr. Crowley (she refused to call him “Old Crow” as her sisters did) would be there. She’d spoken to him over the last few months, when her aunt was in the final stages of death. Hadley offered more than once to come down to Cold River and stay with her, but Aunt Bea declined every time. In truth, Hadley had been relieved when her aunt wrote back to say that she didn’t need any help. Hadley assumed Mr. Crowley was all the help her aunt needed, and that was partly because she’d forgotten how old he was. In her mind, he was at least twenty years younger than he really was.

  He was old, though, and there likely wasn’t much he could do to keep the place up like he’d done when she and her sisters were children. They’d scared him even then, her sisters. Pfeiffer’s razor-sharp tongue and Martha’s beauty were a lethal combination when they were together and had someone cornered. Her sisters would have something to say about the fact that she’d been speaking with both their aunt and Mr. Crowley and not bothered to tell them. They’d think she was keeping secrets from them, as if they were still ten, eight, and six years old, stairstepped siblings, hiding in the woods beyond the fields.

  For a moment, Hadley allowed herself to pretend they were that age again, instead of grown women, now thirty-eight, thirty-six, and thirty-four. She closed her hands tighter around her Louis Vuitton carryall and remembered a time when neither she nor her sisters would have known what a Louis Vuitton was, back to a time when it was perfectly acceptable to have skinned knees and flyaway curls rather than a chic bob and legs ravaged by costly electrolysis.

  “Hadley?”

  Hadley blinked away the memories to find Martha staring at her, her thick eyelashes catching each other as she blinked. “What? What is it?”

  “Pfeiffer went downstairs to use my phone. Her car stalled on the dirt road.”

  “I saw,” Hadley replied. “I had to ask my driver to drop me off right there. He wasn’t too happy to do that, let me tell you.”

  “Your driver?”

  Hadley sighed. “Mark hired him. Wanted to make sure I didn’t have to drive myself from the airport.”

  “Oh,” Martha replied. “Good old Mark.”

  “Yes, well . . .” Hadley trailed off.

  She and Mark had been married for the last fifteen years. They’d met when she’d been invited to a graduation party in Columbia, Missouri, after her friend finished law school. Hadley was taking some time off from her education degree and had been working nonstop for nearly a year. She’d been eager for a night out with her friend, and when Mark introduced himself as a recent law graduate, she’d been enamored with him. He was incredibly competitive, with his eye on a seat in the United States Senate, and Hadley had been desperate to get out of Columbia and the mounds of debt she was piling up. Another year of work as a waitress, and she’d have to move back to Cold River with her aunt. Mark had been a way out, and she’d jumped at the opportunity.

  “Mark couldn’t come with you?” Martha asked, breaking Hadley out of her thoughts.

  “He’s working on his campaign strategy,” Hadley replied. “Just another year and a half before the next election.”

  “Right,” Martha replied, rolling her eyes. “Well, anyway, Pfeiffer is going to call a tow. I guess we’ll have to wait for that before we can leave for the funeral home.”

  “Don’t you have a set of jumper cables in that shiny, new Tesla I saw parked behind Pfeiffer’s car?”

  “No,” Martha said. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought to check. Besides, the hood was smoking. I doubt the car needs to be jumped.”

  “It needs to be junked,” Hadley said, a faint smile crossing her lips. “But don’t you dare tell your sister I said that.”

  Martha bit at her bottom lip to keep from returning her sister’s smile. “Something is going on with her,” she said.

  “What do you think it is?” Hadley asked.

  “I don’t know.” Martha shook her head, crossing her arms across her chest. “But she’s being even more sarcastic than usual.”

  “How could a person possibly be more sarcastic than Pfeiffer?”

  “I didn’t think it was possible either. I think her phone is turned off,” Martha said. “Says her number is no longer in service.”

  “I got the same message,” Hadley replied. “I thought maybe she’d switched numbers and didn’t tell us.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Martha grumbled.

  “I called her work, too,” Hadley continued. “When I couldn’t get her on her cell. That Seth person kept putting me off. Wouldn’t give me much information.”

  “She’s never wanted us to know much about her life,” Martha said. “I don’t know why not. Everybody under the sun knows about our lives.”

  “You should have let her handle that book deal of yours,” Hadley scolded. “I’m sure she’s not forgiven you.”

  “That was three years ago!” Martha replied. “And Henry Brothers offered me way less money than the other publisher. They thought I’d take it because Pfeiffer’s my sister.”

  “How little they know the Hemingway sisters,” Hadley said, arching her eyebrow just enough to be noticeable. “Come on, let’s go downstairs. We need to get that car towed and ourselves ready for tonight.”

  “Fine,” Martha said. “But I’m just staying until the funeral on Friday. I’ve got to be back in Nashville by the weekend.”

  “That suits me,” Hadley replied. “I need to be back in D.C. by the weekend. Mark’s got a function on Saturday night, and I simply must be there.”

  “Simply must?”

  “Yes,” Hadley said, turning her back on her sister. “I’m his wife, and it’s important for me to be there, cocktail in hand, smiling to meet the donors.”

  “I guess not much has changed in politics since 1950,” Martha replied, following after her. “I didn’t realize that it was a constant episode of Mad Men out there.”

  “I do what he asks,” Hadley said simply, feeling Martha’s eyes on her. Of late, that statement was less than true, but right now she couldn’t bring herself to say so. It wasn’t the right time, anyway, as they should all be thinking about their aunt.

  “Maybe if I’d done more of what Travis asked, he wouldn’t have divorced me,” Martha muttered.

  “Travis is a self-centered child,” Hadley replied.

  “I don’t think Mama would have liked him,” Martha said. “Or Mark, for that matter.”

  “Mama’s not here,” Hadley said, trying not to let on that she agreed with Martha. “We did the best we could.”

  “Don’t you think we ought to get hotel rooms in town tonight?” Martha asked once they were
all back downstairs. “There is no way we can stay here.”

  “Why not?” Pfeiffer wanted to know.

  Martha stamped her feet on the hardwood floor, causing a cloud of dust to rise up beneath her shoes. “This is why.”

  “You’re afraid of a little dust?” Pfeiffer asked.

  “We’ll be lucky if this house doesn’t fall in on us before we make it outside,” Martha said. “I’m getting a hotel room.”

  “Well, I’m staying here,” Pfeiffer replied, crossing her arms over her cardigan. “It’ll be fun. Like an adventure.”

  “An adventure where everybody gets tetanus,” Hadley grumbled.

  “Oh, come on,” Pfeiffer said. “It will probably be the last time we stay here.”

  “Fine,” Hadley replied. “Have it your way.” She threw up her arms in defeat and moved away from her sisters into the kitchen.

  “I usually do,” Pfeiffer replied.

  “Great!” Martha said, clapping her hands, which only sent more particles of dust circling around them. “The three of us together again.”

  They stood there, close, but not touching, each careful to keep her thoughts behind her teeth. They hadn’t been together in this house for a long time, and Hadley was sure that it was bringing up memories for each of them that they didn’t want to revisit. For so many years, this place brought joy. For so many years, they were as close as sisters could be, but all of that was gone with one terrible storm, and Hadley didn’t know how they could ever set things right.

  Chapter 5

  Hadley

  THERE WAS ONLY ONE FUNERAL HOME IN ALL OF COLD River, and it was located on the same street as most of the churches in town, with the exception of Second Coming Baptist, which resided in a building that had once been a short-lived nightclub. Their aunt singularly refused to attend any church, reformed nightclub or otherwise, and so her friends and the ladies of the auxiliary had commissioned a Methodist minister from their own congregation for the service. It was odd for a woman of Aunt Bea’s age to refuse to go to church, and that fact wasn’t lost on the people of Cold River. As a girl, like all members of the James family, their aunt had attended the Methodist church. But when she moved back from St. Louis, she refused to go, and it was a rebellion in which the sisters reveled, no longer compelled to get up early in the morning and wear their Sunday best.