Starr Bright Will Be With You Soon

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Impulsively, Sharon gripped Lily’s hands and squeezed them. A pang of happiness ran through Lily like an electric current. Lily recalled how, when they were girls, in high school especially when she’d feared she was losing her sister, Sharon would sometimes grip and squeeze her hands like this, in an ecstasy of emotion; confiding how someone, invariably an older boy, had spoken to her that day, or taken her for a ride in his car. How flattered Lily had been, singled out by Sharon’s attention, which was like a dazzling blinding light.

  Lily admitted, awkwardly, “I’ve been missing you so much, Sharon. I was hoping, in February—at the time of our birthday—”

  Sharon was shaking wrinkles out of a glamorous silver lamé tunic, unless it was a minidress. Distracted, she said, “Oh, yes—our birthday. Actually, I was in Hawaii at the time, trying to get a little rest between engagements. I’ve told you about my friend James Fenke?—who owns a cable station in Pasadena?—he has a lovely house in Honolulu, on the water. A pink sandstone mansion. And such clean white sand.”

  Lily didn’t believe she’d been told about James Fenke; but she murmured yes, to be agreeable.

  “In Hawaii, you lose track of calendar time. Maybe there isn’t even such a thing as time. So, if we had a birthday, I’m afraid I wasn’t aware of it.”

  Lily laughed uneasily. “That’s the wisest course, I’m sure.”

  Trying not to think But why are you here, Sharon? Why now? After fifteen years, and more, of staying away. What motive?

  The last time Sharon had come home, to Shaheen, she’d been desperate. Suicidal. Eight months, three weeks pregnant.

  As if reading Lily’s mind Sharon said, in a neutral voice, “She—Deirdre—‘Deedee,’ you call her—is so”—her eyelids fluttered as if she were searching for the ideal, the perfect word, but could come up only with “—sweet.”

  “Oh yes, Deedee is. Except sometimes, on the surface, just slightly sarcastic.”

  “But intelligent, too. Like you. And so—grown up.”

  “Sometimes!”

  Lily laughed. It was a mother’s prerogative, to be affectionately critical of her child.

  “She seems very—happy.”

  “Deedee is an American teenager, a sophomore in high school. She isn’t happy twenty-four hours a day,” Lily said reprovingly, sensibly. “But she’s happy in her soul, I think. She’s happy with Wes and me.”

  “God, yes. I can see that.”

  Sharon shuddered, as if the prospect of Deedee in another life had passed rapidly through her mind.

  Lily was hanging up a pair of silky slacks, champagne-colored. There was a stain as of nail polish in the fabric but she hesitated to point it out to her sister. She said, instead, groping, almost shyly, “We all made the right decision.”

  “Yes.”

  “With each passing year, it seems more certain.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And it was—wasn’t—so difficult after all. Deedee’s birth certificate with my name on it—the doctor never doubted, you were me. I mean—I was you. He’d only seen us a few times, he wouldn’t have guessed.”

  Sharon said slowly, as if the words gave her pain, “Because, yes—we are twins.”

  “And no one had seen either of us for weeks. At the campgrounds in the mountains. And people had thought I was living in Buffalo, going to school there—a place a girl could get ‘in trouble’ in.” Lily paused, breathing quickly. She felt almost faint. “And Wes—has never asked questions. A girl can make a ‘mistake,’ plenty of guys make mistakes Wes says. I don’t believe I have actually lied to him, I believe that in some way he knows; I mean, he knows the truth of my love for Deedee. And he’s a man who lives in the present, rejoices in the present. He loves Deedee as much as he would if she were his own child.”

  “Well,” said Sharon, sniffing, “—that, you don’t know. No one, not even the man, would know.”

  “I love her so. Oh, Sharon!”

  Lily’s voice was pleading. She hadn’t known she would speak in such a way, blinking panicked tears from her eyes.

  Quickly Sharon said, “Don’t worry, Lily! I haven’t come back to—interfere. You must know that.”

  “It’s just that I love her so—and she doesn’t know.”

  “There’s no reason for her to know. Her, or anyone. You kept your promise to me.”

  “Of course I did, Sharon.”

  Sharon said slowly, again as if the words gave her pain, “You—are me. You bore the baby, and the sin.”

  Lily laughed. “Sin?”

  “In the eyes of the world, I mean. Not in ours.”

  “An ‘unwed mother’ isn’t such an object of scorn any longer, or even pity. There are some—Wes included—who seem even to admire us.”

  “Still, there was sin. A loveless copulation, selfish drugged-out people. Deserving the worst.” Sharon shuddered, as if revolted.

  Lily persisted, trying to smile. “I don’t believe in sin any longer, Sharon. I don’t think I ever did, really. Even Daddy—he was no theologian, but he had a way of calculating Jesus’ message so, after the crucifixion and the resurrection, it was all ‘good news.’ But I do believe in forgiveness.”

  “So do I!” Sharon said with a shrill little laugh. “I hope my own sins will be forgiven.”

  No maternal instinct in me she’d said fiercely, almost proudly. No more than a bitch who devours her own pups.

  Though it didn’t appear to be completely empty, Sharon was roughly zipping up the larger of her suitcases; shoving it beneath the bed before Lily could come help her with it. Her other suitcase, made of a chic dark blue weatherproof fabric, contained, like the Gucci overnight bag, mostly silken undergarments, stockings and toiletries. Something had spilled in it, cologne, hair spray, cosmetics. A sweetish-stale odor emanated from it which (Lily gathered) Sharon herself couldn’t smell.

  Now Sharon did search for a pack of cigarettes, in the shoulder bag. Her hand shook visibly as she placed a long filter-tip cigarette between her lips and lit it. Belatedly asking, “Do you mind, Lily? I’m kind of—anxious.”

  “No! Of course not.”

  Sharon sat heavily on the edge of the bed, and crossed her legs. Long swordlike dancer’s legs. She tried to smile at Lily as if, for an alarmed moment, she’d forgotten who Lily was; why they were here together; like lovers thrown together, passionate yet exhausted. The skin beneath her eyes was discolored, crepey; very like Lily’s, when she was tired. Yet the black mascara, even slightly smeared, gave her a glamorous, exotic look. The pupils of her eyes were dilated as if she were feverish, or drugged.

  Lily did not want to think Of course: she’s taking something.

  Lily did not want to think How many years has it been since my sister has not been taking something?

  Sharon spoke in a low hurried voice as if fearful they might be overheard. Her old air of secrecy, urgency. “It all seems so long ago now, doesn’t it, like something in a dream! Out there in the country—another lifetime. Remember how we prayed? On the bare floorboards, the four of us? Praying. And what came of it was right, I knew in my heart.” She paused, exhaling smoke. “I was so strung out on amphetamines, even the pain might’ve been happening to another person. It might have been you, Lily.”

  The sisters laughed together, thinly, wildly.

  Lily said, “That’s how it seemed to me, too. It seemed almost logical. Daddy promised that God would bless us, Jesus would watch over us. Almost, that night, I felt Him—His presence.”

  “I did, too. I did.”

  “Though I don’t believe, really. I mean—”

  “Oh, but we don’t know. Don’t say you don’t ‘believe,’ Lily—when you don’t know.”

  Lily said, firmly, “The only thing that mattered was that the baby should be born, and live; and be loved.”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a sense in which a baby, human life, doesn’t ‘belong’ to any individuals, anyway. Biological mothers, or fathers. It’s life t
hat begets life.”

  “God begets life.”

  “I didn’t matter, or you. Or Daddy or Momma. Just the baby. God’s will.”

  “He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into the night.’”

  Lily was struck by the calm, clear, bell-like voice in which Sharon spoke these words, from—was it Lamentations? She, Lily, would not have remembered.

  Lily said, “It might have been me, Sharon. Holding your hands, helping you give birth—those hours. So many times afterward I’d catch myself remembering it had been me.”

  Sharon said, “You are her mother, not I; you, Lily, her rightful mother. That was God’s will, He allowed us to know.”

  Lily felt compelled to say, for the sake of her own integrity, “I don’t believe in the supernatural, in ‘divine intervention’ in human affairs. And yet—”

  Sharon interrupted, “You do, Lily! You do believe! As Daddy and Momma taught us! When we were girls, you believed more than I did; you cried, remember how you cried, when Momma told us about the disciples betraying Jesus? And Jesus on the cross?—remember? That doesn’t change. I thought it did, I thought I’d grown away from it, but God never changes. Even when we sin, Lily, even when we are cast low as swine, into the very belly of the beast—even then God is. His will be done. You know that, Lily of the Valley.”

  The sisters stared at each other. Lily was so deeply moved, she could not trust herself to speak.

  The gusty March afternoon had waned abruptly to dusk. Deedee was upstairs in her room, Wes hadn’t yet come home. How strange this room in which they were together, a pretty feminine lavender-and-cream bedroom cozily lit—a bedside lamp casting a warm roseate glow onto the sisters’ rapt faces. Sharon was smoking her cigarette in rapid puffs as if these mouthfuls of smoke were breath itself, pure oxygen. Lily was wiping at her eyes, smiling; about to burst into tears—she was so happy.

  Yes. I know.

  I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. The first and the last.

  It had been more than fifteen years ago, in the late summer of 1981, that Sharon, “Sherrill,” had come home to the Donners, despairing and suicidal and sick with pregnancy. She’d been abandoned, it seemed, by her lover in Mexico. She’d lost her employment as a high-paid fashion model. She’d refused to have an abortion for God had allowed her to know that abortion is murder. Yet, in Shaheen, hidden away in her parents’ house, she’d raved of drowning the baby “like a kitten” if it was born; or stabbing the baby in her womb, the baby and herself. She’d wanted to die, she’d wanted the baby to die with her. Unless Lily would take the child as her own.

  It could not be, yet so it was. So it came to pass.

  For there was the holy power residing in Ephraim Donner: the power of Jesus Christ to heal sickness, to cast out devils. On their knees for ten hours praying, praying. Fasting, and praying. O Lord have mercy. Jesus, help us. Though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Thy rod and Thy staff shall comfort us. And so Jesus had seemed to speak to them, to suggest the wisest course. The sins of subterfuge and deceit in the eyes of mankind were of little consequence set beside the terrible sins of infanticide, suicide. For there had been no doubt among the Donners that Sharon was capable of acts of violence against herself and others. Had she not in her desperation slashed at the tender skin of her forearm with a razor, deep enough to sever an artery? Had she not raked her nails across her face, her breasts? Had she not swallowed pills that made her heart race and leap, cause sweat to ooze like oil from her pores? Had she not tried to starve herself to deny the baby growing in her womb? Had she not pinched her milk-heavy breasts? Raving I am filth, undeserving of life. Take my baby from me and give her to God.

  It could not be, yet it was. So it had come to pass.

  Sharon said, as if she’d been unconsciously reading Lily’s thoughts, “Yes. You did that for me. You, Daddy and Momma—saving my life, which probably wasn’t worth saving, and the baby’s. And how did I repay you?”

  Lily lowered her gaze as if to indicate she didn’t know.

  Sharon said sharply, “They didn’t tell you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I stole their money, what little they had. Before I left without saying goodbye. Oh, Lily—it was only sixty-five dollars. Momma had maybe been saving it for years, in a bureau drawer. I would have stolen church funds except I couldn’t get into the church office.” Sharon had begun to cry almost without expression, her bluish-gray eyes glittering like glass. Yet she continued to smoke, sucking at her cigarette as if it were life to her.

  Lily came near to choking, smoke stinging her eyes. “Oh, Sharon—you couldn’t help yourself, you were sick. You weren’t yourself, really!”

  Sharon said, “That’s so, Lily. It was as if you were somehow me; while I was—I don’t know who. In Mexico, I was so Goddamned naive! In New York I could handle the glamor, the men—the attention; at least, I thought I could, though I’d gotten started with drugs there, mainly to fight exhaustion. And starvation! But I was being exploited all along, and it became obvious on the Mexico shoot. And then—that son of a bitch who ‘fell in love with me’—talked me into quitting my job, traveling with him. He was ‘an independent film producer’—‘an associate of Bertolucci’s’—‘a friend of Dustin Hoffman’s’—saying he was crazy about me, my face, my style; he wanted to marry me, finance films for me; I was going to be ‘a new Grace Kelly’—he said.”

  Lily reached out to touch Sharon’s hand, to clasp her icy fingers.

  “Well. You couldn’t have known.”

  Sharon said, with surprising fury, “It might have been so!—that’s the irony. How do any movie actresses—Julia Roberts, Sharon Stone—Meryl Streep—get started, except by meeting someone who can help them? Someone with connections, with power? In fact he’d been involved in distributing a Bertolucci film in the U.S. He may even have known Dustin Hoffman. And I did look like ‘a new Grace Kelly’ if I was made up in that style. I could be made to look like anyone!” Sharon paused, smoking, brooding. Lily saw a vein throbbing in her left temple. “If only I’d had a better agent, someone who’d protected my rights, gave a damn about my future instead of simply raking in twenty percent off the top of my earnings. Oh, Lily, I know I was naive, I was selfish, and stupid, and getting pregnant—I must have been drunk at the time, or stoned out of my head. Yet—it might have been so, everything that bastard promised. Everything might have happened as it was promised, like a fairy tale.”

  Except, Lily thought, Deedee would not have been born.

  Of course, Lily didn’t say this. She was comforting her angry weeping sister as if she, and not Sharon, were the “elder.” Lily of the Valley at whom no one ever glanced twice in the radiant presence of Rose of Sharon.

  Sharon flinched in self-disgust, as if, another time, she’d been hearing, or sensing, Lily’s thoughts. “Oh, Christ,” she said, “listen to me. Always me, me, me! Blinded by vanity like that peroxide-blond ‘Starr Bright’ in her pancake makeup and false eyelashes and girdle! That old hag! And here I am, your sister ‘Sherrill’—thirty-seven years old and ignorant as a country girl of thirteen.”

  “Sharon, you’re too hard on yourself. You’ve always—”

  “Does your husband know I’m here? Does he want me here?”

  “Of course, Wes wants you. He’s looking forward to meeting you at last.”

  “You called him, did you? Just now?”

  “Yes.”

  Sharon was looking searchingly at Lily as if trying to determine what she really meant. She said, with a wan smile, “Well, I’ll know within a few minutes. If he doesn’t want me. And if so, I promise I’ll leave, tomorrow. I would never come between you and your family, I promise.”

  Of course you won’t, how could you?

  Sharon had removed her tight-fitting leather boots, and was pacing about the room in her stocking feet, smoking, flicking ashes onto the deep-purple carpet. Unobtrusively, not wanting to seem fussy, Li
ly set one of her sculpted clay bowls on the bedside table, for her sister to use as an ashtray. Sharon had reverted to their previous subject and was lamenting, “Oh, Lily, how could I have stayed away, when Daddy died? And then the funeral—I was coming to the funeral, I was coming, but—my life became too complicated, somehow. I got sick, or—I had surgery. And it was too late.”

  Lily had once or twice inquired what the nature of Sharon’s surgery had been, but Sharon’s reply had been vague; she didn’t think it prudent to inquire again. She said, consolingly, “I know, Sharon. It’s all right.”

  “Did Daddy say anything about me—at the end?”

  “Of course.”

  “Or had he forgotten me? Erased me from his memory?”

  “You know better, Sharon. Daddy always loved you.”

  “But could he—forgive me? Stealing from him and Momma like that—”

  “Sharon, you know what Daddy and Momma were like. They didn’t need to ‘forgive’—they loved you.”

  “But they loved you better—they must have. After what I did.”

  Sharon was watching Lily closely, anxiously. Lily felt her face burn with an emotion she could not have named.

  Of course they loved me better, I was the daughter who loved them. I was the daughter who behaved like a daughter to them. I was the mother of their only grandchild. What could you expect, that they could love you more?

  But Lily only repeated, quietly, what had been true enough: “They always loved you, Sharon. It wasn’t their way to compare us.”

  Sharon said, aggrieved, “Oh, I loved them! I just didn’t have a chance to show it, as you did. I went out into the world, I didn’t stay close to home, like you.”

  Sharon paused to light another cigarette, shaking out the match and tossing it onto the bedside table—not quite into the clay bowl. Unobtrusively, Lily put the match into the bowl, and handed it to Sharon to use. She said, “You’ve never asked about how Daddy died. You know it was cancer of the liver? But, at the end, it wasn’t so bad actually. He was semiconscious much of the time, didn’t seem to be in pain; kept drugged, I suppose. Wes had arranged for him to have a private room at Yewville General and we visited him every day, I was there through much of the day, for weeks, we talked, we even sang sometimes, you know how Daddy loved those old hymns. It was like Momma was in the room with us, we talked to her, too, sometimes. Daddy was a good man, Sharon; I know people would describe him as simple, a simple unquestioning Christian; but I always thought he was a good man in his heart, naturally; like Momma, too; their religion didn’t make them ‘good,’ they made their religion ‘good.’ You know, Daddy was unusual as a preacher in that he didn’t give much credence to ‘evil.’ Never preached much about the devil or hell. I think that people like him and Momma die more easily than others—I mean, people without bitterness or fear. They live more easily. So, when you didn’t come to see him, Sharon, of course Daddy was disappointed, but he didn’t stop loving you. He didn’t judge you at all. He always thought of Deedee as your gift to—the world. He always had more faith in us, I think, than we could have in ourselves.”