The Sisters Hemingway

by Annie England Noblin

  It was a dog.

  A snoring dog.

  Pfeiffer looked around the room, wondering if she was still dreaming. Her head was fuzzy and throbbing from the whiskey, so she knew she had to be awake. How had a dog gotten into the house? she wondered. Surely she would have noticed if one of her sisters had come with a dog the day before. Should she just shoo it off? Was it going to attack her if she woke it? Could she escape the couch without it noticing? How did the damn thing get inside to begin with?

  That’s when she remembered the opening in the front door—the one her mother had made for Renaldo the raccoon all those years ago. Looking down at the dog again, she wasn’t sure how an animal that big had managed to get inside an opening made for a raccoon, but it had to be the only way it had gotten inside.

  As Pfeiffer stared down at the sleeping animal, Hadley appeared at the top of the staircase. She stopped halfway down, one of her delicate hands gripping the banister. “Is that . . . is that a dog?” she asked.

  Pfeiffer nodded. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “You let a dog into the house?”

  “I didn’t let it in,” Pfeiffer whispered. “I woke up, and there it was, snoring on the floor.”

  “How did it get here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Hadley proceeded down the stairs, not taking her eyes off of the dog. “Do you think we should wake it up?”

  Pfeiffer shrugged. “Think it might try to bite us?”

  “I don’t know,” Hadley replied. “It doesn’t look vicious.”

  “Its face looks melted,” Pfeiffer said.

  It was true, the dog’s long face looked like a puddle on the floor, its jowls moving ever so slightly with each snore. It was a basset hound, Pfeiffer realized. It was the kind of dog, along with beagles, that were common out in the country. It could have come from any one of the neighbors’ houses.

  “Wake it up,” Hadley demanded.

  Pfeiffer sighed. It was too early for her sister to be making demands of her. She opened her mouth to protest, and then remembered what she’d promised Martha the night before. “Fine,” she said.

  She reached down and rubbed her hand across the dog’s back. It didn’t even stir. Next, she scratched its ears. Still nothing. Finally, Pfeiffer got out of bed and crouched down on the floor next to it and lifted its head slightly. The dog’s eyes fluttered open and then rolled to the back of its head.

  “Is it dead?” Hadley asked.

  “No,” Pfeiffer replied, standing up. “It’s breathing.”

  “What are we going to do with it?” Hadley wanted to know.

  Pfeiffer shrugged. “I’m leaving it right where it is,” she said. “I have to get ready for the funeral.”

  “You can’t just leave it,” Hadley replied, her hands on her hips. “You have to make it go outside.”

  “It’s not my dog,” Pfeiffer retorted. “I don’t have to do anything. If you want it to go outside, do it yourself.”

  Pfeiffer ignored Hadley’s glare as she traipsed up the stairs. As she went past Martha’s room, she noticed the door was cracked open a bit. When she looked inside, she didn’t see her. Figuring she’d missed her opportunity for the use of the bathroom, she turned around to go back downstairs when something caught her eye from inside the other bedroom. It was Martha, sound asleep on Pfeiffer’s bed. Well, the bed that had once been Pfeiffer’s. Technically, nothing in this house had been hers for a long, long time.

  Her sister was sprawled out on her back, her blond hair splayed out around her. Pfeiffer could see a little bit of dark coming in at the roots—the dirty dishwater of Martha’s natural color. Her limbs were tanned and toned, and her eyelashes, clearly false, fluttered a little when Pfeiffer accidentally brushed against the door, and it gave an annoyed, underused groan.

  Martha sat up, blinking. “Who’s there?” she called. “Hadley?”

  “It’s only me,” Pfeiffer said, stepping inside the bedroom. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “It’s fine,” Martha replied. “I meant to get up an hour ago and go for a run.”

  “A run?”

  Martha nodded. “You know, exercise?”

  “I know what exercise is,” Pfeiffer replied. “I just don’t do it unless I have to.”

  “Not all of us can stay skinny without it,” Martha said. She sounded annoyed, but a grin was creeping across her face. “So did you get some sleep?”

  “A little,” Pfeiffer admitted. “I had some crazy dreams, though.”

  “Me too,” Martha replied. “I think it’s being back here in this old house. It’s stirring up a lot of . . . memories.”

  “Memories I don’t think any of us want to think about,” Pfeiffer muttered. “I mean, I know we all talk about how we would have come for visits if Aunt Bea hadn’t told us no, but I don’t think that’s true.”

  Martha looked up at Pfeiffer. “Why would any of us want to come back here?” she asked. “Everybody we’ve ever loved has died in this damn town.”

  Pfeiffer sat down next to her. “My therapist told me two years ago that I needed to go home and confront my demons,” she replied. “I told her I didn’t have any demons. Just a lot of dead relatives.”

  “I never tried therapy. I guess I should have,” Martha said.

  “Sure you did,” Pfeiffer said. “Pretty sure Jack Daniel’s did more for you and cost less than my therapist.”

  Martha laughed. “Do you remember when Travis’s grandmother died a few years ago?”

  Pfeiffer nodded.

  “Well, after the funeral, I made some terrible joke about death—remember like we used to do after Mom and Mary died?”

  “We had to make jokes,” Pfeiffer said. “It was the only way to deal with such an awful thing happening to us.”

  “Well,” Martha continued, “I don’t remember what it was, but I thought maybe he’d think it was funny. Maybe he’d be able to smile even though he was heartbroken,” she said. “But he didn’t laugh. In fact, he told me I was insensitive and didn’t speak to me for three days.”

  “Not everybody appreciates our humor,” Pfeiffer admitted. “The only people I ever felt like I could talk to about that time are you and Hadley.”

  “But we don’t talk,” Martha said. “Not like we used to.”

  “No,” Pfeiffer agreed. “We don’t.”

  “Do you think Hadley’s ever talked to anyone else about it?” Martha asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Pfeiffer replied, a grin pasted across her face. “She’s pretty tightly wound.”

  Martha eyed her sister skeptically. “Have you two already been into an argument this morning?”

  Pfeiffer avoided Martha’s gaze. “Not exactly.”

  “Pfeiffer!”

  “It wasn’t my fault!” Pfeiffer protested. “I woke up, and there was this dog on the floor beside the couch.”

  “A dog?”

  “Yeah. A big, old basset hound.”

  “How did it get inside?” Martha asked.

  “I think through Renaldo’s old pet door,” Pfeiffer replied.

  “Did Aunt Bea have a dog?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Weird.”

  “Anyway,” Pfeiffer said, “Hadley told me to make it go outside, like I’d personally invited it inside to pass out on the floor. I told her if she wanted it gone, she could do it herself.”

  “You know she’s allergic to dogs,” Martha replied.

  Pfeiffer scrunched up her face and said, “She is not. That’s just what she always said because she didn’t want to be the one to feed Daddy’s cattle dogs.”

  “I didn’t mind,” Martha said. “I love dogs.”

  “Come on,” Pfeiffer said. “We better get ready to go to this funeral, or Aunt Bea will haunt us for being late.”

  “Don’t say that!” Martha replied. “She really might, you know.”

  “Ghosts don’t exist,” Pfeiffer replied. “And anyway, she’d be too old to catch
us now.”

  “Ghosts do exist,” Martha said. “And if Aunt Bea is going to haunt anyone, it’s sure as hell going to be you!”

  The sisters dissolved into a fit of giggles, and for the first time in a long time, Pfeiffer remembered just how good it felt to laugh.

  “I really need to get ready,” Martha said. “It takes me forever.”

  “Go on ahead,” Pfeiffer replied. “I can wait.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Pfeiffer nodded. “All I need to do is brush my teeth and straighten my hair. I know you’ve got a whole MAC counter in that bag of yours. So go ahead.”

  “You want to borrow some makeup?” Martha asked, getting out of bed and stretching.

  Pfeiffer wrinkled her nose. “No,” she replied. “Foundation gives me a rash.”

  “Well, a little lip gloss and mascara never hurt anybody.”

  “Go,” Pfeiffer said, pointing toward the open door. “Before I change my mind.”

  “Whatever,” Martha replied, turning around. “Just trying to help you out.”

  Pfeiffer rolled her eyes. She’d never managed to master makeup, and to be honest, she was glad. It took up so much time. All she needed was a bit of ChapStick, and she was good to go, but her sisters were always trying to get her to wear more. She didn’t like makeup. She didn’t like the way it made her skin feel or covered the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose—her favorite feature.

  She stood up and walked out into the hallway. She walked past the bathroom, a 1950s addition to the house, when their grandparents moved in with their mother to take care of the farm and their grandfather Charlie’s aging parents. She stopped when she got to Aunt Bea’s room. It was at the far end of the hallway, the opposite direction from the stairs, and Pfeiffer didn’t know why her feet led her there. She raised her fist to knock, and then dropped it back down to her side when she realized that there wasn’t any need to knock—not anymore. Instead, she pushed the door wide open and stepped inside.

  The room looked much like it had when it belonged to her mother and both of her parents before that. She figured it probably hadn’t changed too much throughout the years, with the exception of paint on the walls and different pictures hanging on them.

  There was a queen-sized bed pushed against the far end of the wall with a wrought-iron headboard and frame. The mattress was covered with a lavender quilt, probably handmade by her aunt. There was a matching oak dresser and nightstand, and the closet door was open, revealing all of Aunt Beatrice’s clothing.

  Pfeiffer walked over to the bed and sat down. It smelled like the perfume their aunt always wore, Gardenia by Park & Tilford. Pfeiffer wasn’t sure how her aunt managed to find the scent, since she was sure it had been out of production for years, but nonetheless, that’s what she smelled like. There was a nearly empty bottle of it on the nightstand, along with two photo albums and a notebook that Pfeiffer had never seen before.

  Glancing around the room, as if her aunt might walk in at any moment, Pfeiffer took the albums off of the nightstand and set them in her lap. Gingerly, she opened the first one, and was surprised to see baby pictures of her mother. The first few pages were full of her; from the time she was born up until the time she was two or three years old. She’d been a beautiful baby, with sweet round cheeks and a headful of white-blond hair. Towheaded, is what her mother had called it. Her hair stayed that blond for all of her life, and their mother said that many babies outgrow it, like Pfeiffer and her sisters had.

  The next pages were more photos of her mother as she grew up. There were school pictures and birthday party pictures, and at the end . . . a wedding picture of her mother and father. Pfeiffer paused, spreading her fingers across the photo. They were both so young, and they both looked happy. She wished she could pull the picture out and take it with her, but it felt wrong to tear it from the album where it’d lived for so many years. Reluctantly, she turned to the last page and saw a picture of herself with her sisters, the last photograph of their whole family, when Mary had been an infant.

  She remembered that photo. They’d had it professionally taken, and their mother complained about how much it cost, but their father insisted. It was July, and so hot outside that she’d cried when her mother made her wear tights underneath her dress, and Hadley slapped her hands in the car when she tried to take them off. That was the reason she was scowling while everybody else, even her baby sister, was smiling.

  Pfeiffer shut the album and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about any of that right now, even though she knew she should be grateful for the memory. She put the album back on the nightstand and looked down at the other one. It was much older, and the pages were even yellower than the first one. When she opened it, the spine gave a tired sigh as if the album might break apart right there in her hands.

  The photos stopped at Aunt Bea’s seventeenth birthday party; there were two pages of Bea and what appeared to be several of her friends all dressed up and sitting daintily at a table in the kitchen—the same table that was still in the room at that moment. In the photographs, Aunt Bea’s eyes were bright, despite the fact that the pictures were faded. She was smiling, and she looked happy. She was so far away from the version of Aunt Bea that Pfeiffer knew that Pfeiffer brought the album up close to her face for better inspection.

  As she did so, something slipped out from between the pages and fell onto her lap. Pfeiffer set the album aside and looked down. It was a brooch composed of two tarnished hearts. It was cheaply made, Pfeiffer realized, and not something someone would keep for monetary value, which meant that her aunt had likely kept it because it held sentimental value of some kind.

  Pfeiffer turned it over in her hands, looking for an inscription and finding none. She wondered if a man had given this piece of jewelry to her aunt. As far as Pfeiffer knew, her aunt had never come close to getting married. Aunt Bea didn’t talk about her relationships, and that was mainly because she didn’t seem to have many. The thought of Aunt Bea being in love seemed strange to her; still, someone had given her the brooch, and Aunt Bea had seen fit to keep it for all these years.

  “Pfeiffer!” Martha called from the other end of the hallway. “I’m done in the bathroom. It’s all yours!”

  Pfeiffer shoved the brooch back into the album. “I’m coming,” she said. She stood up and placed the albums back on the nightstand. As she did so, the dog ambled into the room, and in her effort to shoo it away, Pfeiffer got her foot tangled in the bedskirt and tripped. She put her hands out to catch herself, grabbing onto the nightstand in the process. It came toppling over with her, landing on top of her in a heap on the floor.

  “What’s going on up there?” Hadley called. “Are you all right?”

  “Damn dog,” Pfeiffer managed from beneath the nightstand.

  She sat up, pushing the pieces of splintered wood off her. Both the lamp and the bottle of perfume lay broken beside her. Next to them, covered in shards of glass and old perfume, was a black leather-bound notebook. It had the letters BAJ embossed on the front. Pfeiffer picked it up, holding her nose as the ancient scent of Gardenia invaded her nostrils.

  “Pfeiffer!” Hadley called again. “What is going on up there?”

  “I’m fine!” Pfeiffer hollered. “I’ll be right down.”

  Pfeiffer stood up, careful to avoid any broken glass, and wincing at the small piece of splintered wood lodged in the palm of one of her hands. In the other hand she still held the journal. The dog looked up at her with its mournful eyes and then plopped itself down onto the rug at the foot of the bed. Looking over her shoulder to make sure neither of her sisters was standing in the doorway, she sat down next to the dog and opened the journal.

  Beatrice

  January 14, 1948

  Today I turned 17 years old. Now that it’s past midnight, I can write it and not be telling a fib. I’ve never been able to sleep the night before my birthday. I love birthdays more than anything else in the world. Mama stayed up la
te baking me a German chocolate cake, and Daddy went to town and bought me mittens and a scarf, my first-ever store-bought, as a present. When I told him that I planned to stay inside this year for my party, because I’m practically a woman and too old for the outside games we usually play, he looked sad. Every year he clears out a special place in the yard for games. We all drink hot chocolate and warm ourselves by the fire, running in and out of the house each time our legs have thawed out enough to move. But not this year. This year, I want a luncheon with my three best girlfriends.

  I want to dress up and drink tea. I want to talk about boys and giggle about things Mama calls “foolhardy.” I’m not sure I know what that word means, but Mama uses it to describe everything I like.

  Daddy’s new farmhand stopped to talk to me while I was outside feeding the chickens yesterday. His name is Will, and he’s 25. He comes from some place back east. I can’t remember the name of the town right now. But he says that their winters are ten times as cold and that they catch lobster in big traps, fresh from the Atlantic Ocean. He knows more about anything than any boy I’ve ever met. Rufus Crowley doesn’t like him, but I think that’s just because he’s jealous. Mama says he’s got a crush on me, but he’s my friend. Besides, I don’t want to live on a farm for the rest of my life, and that’s all Rufus could ever offer me.

  Last night, just as I was about to fall asleep, I heard a thump against my window. At first, I thought maybe a bat had flown into the side of the house, but then I heard it again and again, and I knew not even a bat could be that stupid.

  When I opened the window to check, I saw Will standing down there in the dark. He lives in an old tenant shack on the edge of our property, and I’d never seen him out this late before. I asked what he was doing, and told him he better hush up or he was going to wake Daddy, and I knew Daddy wouldn’t be happy to find Will staring up at me while I was wearing nothing but my nightgown.

  He called to me to come outside. Luckily, Mama and Daddy sleep heavy and they were all the way on the other side of the house. My brother, Charlie, lives in town with his wife, Maryann, and so there was nobody awake to keep me from going down to meet him, even though I knew I shouldn’t.