More, I suddenly saw school as expensive, when compared to the chance to start a real life with someone who loved me, who wanted me with him. Quitting school felt right: I needed to be home with my soon-to-be husband, to care for my family, and yes, for Hattie. I was proud of my decisions, they demonstrated my selflessness, my duty and my larger-than-life love. I ignored nagging doubts that picked at me like an itch, making plans to move in with Buddy, into a home just for us. I told myself that we would be close enough to Hattie, that she would be fine in our old house. Buddy had assured me that we would all be family, but that he needed me.
“You’re going be my wife, Penny. Your sister can take care of herself. It’s not right for her to live with us.” He looked at me firmly. “I just won’t have it.” I liked that—he wanted me all to himself—then hated myself for it later.
* * *
Hattie walked me down the aisle on my wedding day, clutching and crying. A couple of sad beauties in the eyes of our town. Later, Hattie, the maid of honor, drunk and grinning her pain away, twirled on the wooden floor at the wedding reception, all eyes on her. I sipped flat champagne and looked at my new husband, who, I noticed, was watching Hattie also. Buddy’s bright blue eyes, already getting that look I had learned to recognize as his drunkenness, fixed on the pixie schoolgirl. I smiled, thinking that he was proud of his new family.
* * *
“You’re so lucky,” said Hattie, watching me pack the last of my things. I hadn’t stayed often with Hattie in the house before the wedding, but she had gotten used to my being around again. She wiped a tear, and I looked the other way. The late summer sun came through the window, brightening the room.
“You’re gonna be okay here by yourself, Hattie.”
“Sure, I guess. I mean, are you sure you and Buddy don’t want to move in here? There’s lots of room.”
“Yeah, I know. But, you know, we just got married. We want our own space. And,” I looked around, “I need a break from this place.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
“We’ll come over all the time, though, I promise.”
“I know.”
“Maybe we should get you a dog or something.” We. We. We. I wore my marriage like a badge, and didn’t see myself for the child that I still was.
She laughed and turned away, rolling up a poster that lay on the bed. “No, that’s okay. Not right now.”
“You’ll be so busy with school soon, and going out with your friends, that you’ll hardly miss me, I promise.”
Hattie fiddled with a loose thread on her bedspread as she watched me.
“I’m sorry, Penny. I’m sorry Mum missed your wedding.” Her voice was breaking again, and I gave her a quick smile and turned away.
I couldn’t look at her. “We didn’t know, right? She was bound to be stung eventually. She was always outside, but we just never knew she had a bee thing.” I clenched my teeth, put my head into my closet and grabbed a bunch of hangers.
“Yeah.” She hiccupped a sob back. “Um. Maybe, Penny, we could have dinners here? I’m not that good at cooking, but we could order in food or whatever.”
“For sure. Great idea. I’ll tell Buddy, I’m sure he’ll love that.”
* * *
And he did, actually. He held my hands to his lips. He reassured me that any family we had would include Hattie.
“She’s my little sister, too, Pen,” he said, his husky voice like a spell. I know he meant it, and that he did love me, for whatever it’s worth now. In my deepest, dark heart I know. He wasn’t all bad, or even mostly bad. Finding that part of him was like stumbling into a trap and discovering it had teeth only after its jaws were around your ankle.
True to his word, we often had Hattie over to our house, which was walking—or running—distance from our family home. Our house—mine and Buddy’s—was a small bungalow set beside an unused barn. The property was larger than we’d ever need. I loved it, and I loved seeing Hattie kicking up the dusty country road in her sneakers, playing grown-up by bringing a bottle of wine or a dessert from the local baker. In the winter, she appeared out of the white, a snowy vision. Bustling into the door with a burst of icy wind behind her, her cheeks and nose bright pink.
“Hattie, you look frozen!” Buddy would rush over, helping her out of her coat. “But beautiful, of course.” She laughed into his face like he was the best older brother.
“Right, the snotty nose is really a great look. Hi, Penny!” She’d call in to me. “Smells great in there!”
Everything seemed fine then, in those snatched moments. I wish our mother could have seen how things were falling into place, how we looked out for her, made room for her. Those days and nights, playing cards and laughing. Buddy’s hand on Hattie’s back as he moved past her in the kitchen. Lingering looks, kindly ones on her face. Making a home. A family. There was a kinship between them, that was all, I told myself. I was lucky they were so close.
Then, always, at the end of the night, I looked at my watch, and Hattie blushed and said she should be getting on her way. Buddy offered to drive her home and I said that she was fine to walk, Hattie agreeing quickly. Not calling for a while. Knowing she was okay, all by herself. I was trying to make a new life. I was trying to get on. New love. But nothing stays new.
Closing cupboards too hard. Muttering. Sarcasm swirling in my glass. I hated myself when I felt this way.
“What’s the problem, Penny? I was just being nice.”
I wanted to believe him. That it was just me, being jealous.
“You said to make her feel at home here!” Rubbing his chin in pretend confusion. “Jesus, I do not understand you sometimes.”
“Well, no kidding,” I mumbled.
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m not,” I said, but wondered if maybe I was.
“You’re acting crazy. I’m going for a walk.”
So many nights. Words became bigger and meaner, twisting my thoughts.
And when words weren’t enough, shoves, elbows, slaps to make me see. Make me understand.
There are days still, that I wake up and am sure I can smell smoke.
6
The day after the fire.
“I’m going to the morgue, Hattie. They want me to identify him.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
She had just hung up the phone. The local paper had called, wanting details of the fire. What happened. What a tragedy. Hattie’s voice had been cold and far away as she’d answered them. Please respect my sister’s privacy in this very difficult time.
“I don’t think so. I think I should go alone.”
We never spoke of it. I was superstitious. Whenever Hattie began to discuss what had happened—Shouldn’t we talk about this, Penny?—I shut her down. I was afraid our house would rat us out somehow. I was afraid that even in those hallowed halls our secret would escape, rush up the chimney like a wind, blow around the town and into everyone’s ears. I tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, patched the hole in the wall of our minds so unless you were looking closely, you would never know it had been there.
* * *
I’d never been to a morgue. St. Margaret’s didn’t have one. It also didn’t have a movie theatre or a bookstore, or any number of things people wanted. I wasn’t surprised that I had to drive to the hospital in nearby Woepine to see Buddy one last time. Officer Moore had written the directions on his official police pad, even though I knew my way, and it was wadded up in my hands as I turned the wheel into the parking lot of the Woepine Hospital, where the body, his body, in all its large and indisputable strength, was being kept in the basement on ice. I turned my car off and wiped sweat from my face. The hospital was a large, white-brick building. Buddy and I were both born there. I thought of Buddy’s parents, and of Officer Moore going to their small bungalow to sit on their couch and do the same as he’d done with Hattie and me. Buddy’s stern, quiet father, murmuring to Mrs. Collerfield, wild with sorrow. Her wails came my w
ay, reaching me through the phone when I called. I cried quietly at the other end, saying nothing while they told me they loved me, that Buddy had loved me, that they insisted I come over. I deflected and hid under my guilt. I needed to be with my family. My family meant Hattie.
I followed the arrows to the basement, Officer Moore’s paper still in my hand, a crumpled buoy. I saw him standing with his back to me, speaking with a woman at a reception desk. She caught my eye and smiled kindly; Officer Moore turned and nodded quickly, coming towards me.
“Mrs. Collerfield, thank you for coming.”
“It’s Penny, please. I never really took to being called Mrs. Collerfield.” My voice was shaking. I was about to cry and so stopped talking altogether.
“Of course.” He extended his arm past the gatekeeper desk. “This way, please.”
There are things that make your feet feel like they are lifting off the ground. Things that are so strange or unfamiliar or awful that you take leave of yourself. I felt, in those minutes while Officer Moore escorted me to the remains of my husband, that my tongue swelled like a thick mass, and my body hummed and hovered. My ears buzzed, and I hardly heard what he was saying. There was a bag and a zipper, and as it was coming down, the noise in my ears was deafening.
And then there he was, peeled and horrific like a scalded red and hairless beast. I once saw a photograph of a moose that had been charred in a British Columbia forest fire, galloping away from a bear. The photographer had been close enough to see the burnt-away skin, hanging in folds, glinting bone of kneecaps bending through stretched and mottled flesh. The bear in pursuit. Right on its heels.
I stumbled, and Officer Moore, nice and clean and mindful of protocol, instinctively reached out in my direction. I veered away, afraid of him touching me, and nodded many times, yes, yes, yes, please, that’s him, please put it up again. Acid in my mouth.
“I’m going to do everything I can,” Officer Moore said quietly, “to get to the bottom of this, to help you find peace.” I stared at him, startled, and nodded.
And then we were back, back to the desk with the nice receptionist, someone moving something on wheels in another room, a clanging, a door closing, a doctor being paged. Right here, dear, where it says identification. And your name on the line, please. Thank you, dear. And I am so sorry.
“Yes,” I sobbed. Death is such a sad thing.
* * *
“What did he look like?”
Hattie met me at the door as soon as I got back that afternoon, when the clouds opened up a condemnation. She reached out to take my umbrella, her face crumpled in fear. I watched water pool on the floor and wondered about mopping it up. I didn’t look at Hattie. I said nothing, and went up to my room, a hand on the railing.
* * *
The funeral was something I hadn’t thought of, not really. I hadn’t conceived any of it, and so the sheer fact of it hit me with the force of death itself.
“Buddy sure had a lot of relatives, didn’t he?” Hattie said, as we’d pulled up to the church. Our wedding had been a small affair at the local Catholic church, then a reception at the Legion. I hadn’t met many of these people before now. I nodded in agreement, watching a young woman with an ashen face lift a toddler out of her car. So many there had that ruddy-faced, healthy look of the Collerfields. Freckles and dirty-blond hair, laugh lines and bright blue eyes. Their sorrow blew around the room and shook my balance. They cried into my shoulder. They held my face in their kind hands and shook their heads. They gripped Hattie, who looked like she’d disappear into the wool of their overcoats like a lost poppy pin.
Under the chestnut trees of St. Margaret’s Catholic Church, I stood with my hands clasped, my wedding ring like an anvil, at the edge of the grave. Hattie’s arm was around me. She was trembling.
She whispered, looking at the coffin, “Good Lord. What have we done?” I stared at her in disbelief, and she shook herself and looked around. No one was near us, no one heard. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. I’m sorry.
Back at our house later, people filled the rooms. Talking, chasing children, laughing and wiping tears. I hadn’t accounted for all of them. Buddy’s mother sat in one of the living-room chairs, smiling wanly at everyone who came to offer their condolences. His dad had been steadily sobbing in the foyer, hadn’t taken off his coat. Within a couple of months, they would move from St. Margaret’s, to get away from the memories. I heard from them seldom, and then only in cards at Christmas. I will forever think of them, impotent in grief, frozen in our house like specters.
My friend from high school, Sally, was constantly asking me what she could do, how she could help.
“You don’t have to be this strong, Penny,” she whispered while offering another in a series of hugs. “We are all here to hold you up.” I nodded, my eyes searching the room for an exit. I dodged her throughout the day, along with many other acquaintances, people from Buddy’s work, neighbors, and high-school peers. People wanted to share their stories, hoping I would lend mine back, using grief like currency. But where were these people during my marriage? When my body was a map of violence, everyone had somewhere else to be. Although I knew that I had been expert at hiding it, a master at makeup, prone to calling in sick to let the swelling go down.
“Thanks, Sal,” I said, and thought how, in a different life, I truly could have appreciated her huge heart, her compassion, her friendship. A life where I didn’t have to keep people at arm’s length. “This is just how I deal with things, I guess.”
She held me by the shoulders and smiled bravely. “I understand. In that case,” she inhaled deeply, “let me clean dishes instead!” She grinned and headed to the sink.
“I don’t think we have enough vases,” Hattie said to me from the counter. We were inundated. The kitchen overflowed with flowers as though they were growing out of every surface of the house. She brandished a pair of scissors and cut stems, filling every vessel we could find with water. I uncovered sandwiches and fruit trays.
“You have to go out there, Penny,” she said quietly as she passed me.
“I know, Hattie. Just let me be.”
But I went into the foyer, through to the living room, where the first person I saw was Buddy’s best friend, Mac Williams, laughing bawdily while tears streamed down his face. He was loudly telling a story about Buddy to a quiet classmate of Buddy’s—Gary Fagan, who had withstood a lifetime of being called “Faggoty-Anne” by Buddy and Mac—while downing a can of beer in huge gulps. Other people sat in chairs and on the arms of sofas, speaking quietly to each other; children weaved around people’s legs. I noticed the crust of a sandwich ground into the rug. It was hot in there, and I waved a condolence card I’d been holding in front of my face like a fan.
“He was such a son of a bitch, honest to God,” Mac howled, shaking his head.
Gary caught my eye and smiled weakly. “Hi, Penny.”
I waved my fingers, and Mac turned, lurching immediately in my direction.
“Penny, babe,” he said, arms opened wide. He enveloped me in a massive hug, all flannel and aftershave. “I didn’t get to tell you at the church, but I am so sorry for your loss.” He began to sob in earnest again, wiping his face, and coughing. “I can’t believe it, Penny. I mean, you know better than anyone: Bud and I had our moments. He could be a real prick, am I right?”
I raised my eyebrows and smiled at Mac nervously.
“Sure, I guess.”
“You guess?” He chuckled, and there it was, his shared tendency with Buddy to abruptly turn, change his mood on a dime. “Yeah, right. You know! He could be such an angry son of a bitch, anything could set him off. But man, he was like a brother to me, Penny. Honest to God. I can’t believe it.”
People were staring. I put a hand on Mac’s enormous forearm. “I know, Mac. He loved you, too.”
“I mean, God, we fought sometimes, you know? Like wild dogs. What do I mean, sometimes?” He chuckled. “A lot! I mean, you know if anyone what he was like.
Eh? Right?” His mouth curved into a sad smile, and I wished the floor would swallow him up, shut him up, but he kept crashing through with it. “Sid and Nancy, you two, right? But my God, he had a heart of gold. I know he woulda taken a bullet for me.” He downed the last of his beer and looked around immediately, hoping to replace it. “Like a goddamn brother.” He staggered from the room like a confused bear, and I heard him in the kitchen, calling to Hattie, telling her how sexy she looked, his attention turned from grief to flirtation like the flip side of a drunken coin.
There were a lot of people from our childhood there. A couple of high-school teachers, a lot of young men and women who we hadn’t seen since our mother’s funeral, but who we knew the way you know the landscape of your town. They worked in shops and factories, their parents had known our mother, their stories were woven into the fabric of this place. They stood like props on the set of this phony funeral. Officer Moore arrived, and I nervously watched him: his finger in the delicate handle of a teacup, speaking quietly with a woman Hattie and I had gone to school with. What was he asking? Hattie had reminded me that he used to mow our lawn for Mum when we were younger, mostly after I’d gone away to school. And seeing him there, in regular clothes, jogged some faded memories for me. He had been heavier, quieter, from what I could remember. Now he was fit, and his face had lost the chubbiness that had dogged him through youth, but I could still find that baby face in the man that stood in my living room. He had turned to watch Mac embrace me. I had smiled at him, almost sheepishly, when Mac had lumbered from the room, trying to share acknowledgment of “those guys”—the guys we’d known to rule the town, showing up late and drunk at festivals, tearing down banners, and pulling stunts. Officer Moore had made a career of responding to noise complaints from Mac Williams style parties. But he hadn’t returned my smile; he held my gaze for a moment before looking away.
Sister of Mine Page 5
