Hattie offered for me to sleep in her old room, as Elliot was in what used to be mine, and she and Jameson were in our mum’s room; we couldn’t seem to shake the set-up of our childhood, if in name only. My room. Your room. Mum’s room. But I preferred to sleep in the cool basement, off and away, on a pullout couch with the promise of silence and darkness. And that night, as I fell flat into dreamlessness, sleeping like I was being lifted into the air, I was sure I would never leave again.
22
And soon, we three, we were back. All of us, Hattie, Jameson and me, on our best behavior at first, doing this dance to which we all knew the moves. Forward, back, side, side. We were partly pretending, but it was hard to resist the fantasy that we could go back in time. It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought, not what I had anticipated after deciding to return. Hattie stayed in most nights and was glad to have me there. I was so relieved to be welcomed. These two were my people, and after being alone for so long, I was blindly relieved to be home again.
And then there was Elliot. He, I discovered, was not at all what I had expected. He was serious and silly, manic in his moods, sneaky and conniving, and when he napped, with curls damp to his forehead, I thought I might be sick with love. I was not prepared for this. I was ready, in fact, to be impervious to his charms, to find him sticky, bothersome, annoying. I was not his mother, I insisted to myself, but his aunt. And an estranged one at that. The whole town, as tight and tiny as it was, seemed to have taken a vow of silence on Elliot’s and Hattie’s behalf. Hattie was sure Elliot would never know. Hattie was his mother, and I was his aunt.
But there was something, I am sure of it now, that snuck in there, some kind of subconscious fevered connection. Not that I thought I deserved any role or name or position that sounded of family, to say little of recognition or closeness, let alone motherliness. I was prepared to be on the fringe: a friend from afar who was staying for a while. But there is a motherly instinct, isn’t there? We couldn’t keep from each other, he and I. Couldn’t be expected to. Much as I didn’t want to, I loved him profoundly, violently.
Morning after morning, Elliot padded down the stairs to see me. He climbed onto the pullout couch, and it squeaked under his weight. He lifted the covers of my sleeping bag and moved in close to me, with sweet boy breath and rosy cheeks after sleeping through a hot summer night, breeze through the windows, his pajamas warm, and his hands, which he sometimes—more and more often—clasped in mine, were hot and damp and perfect. He wanted to play: first thing in the morning, after breakfast, all day, right until bedtime. We spent many early mornings, often with Jameson, who was an early riser, making train tracks with wooden pieces that wove around table legs and underfoot, drawing diggers and cranes on colored construction paper and cutting them out. Tiny triangles of red and blue and yellow falling to the floor beneath us, as the mornings stretched into afternoons and weeks.
“He’s really taken to you,” said Hattie, one evening, her voice with a slightly hard edge.
“The feeling’s mutual. He’s so great, Hattie, really. He’s a great kid.”
“Yeah. Well, I don’t think I have had much to do with that, frankly.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“I’m so glad you’re home, Penny. It never felt right without you here.”
And I know she had been glad, initially, for there was something in the newness, the relief, the sheer change from the monotony of her life that lifted, however briefly, the weight that appeared to be pulling her under.
Three adults are better than two when it comes to children, and everything took on that familiar feeling of play, of comfort. It was autumn, and while summer was our season of preference, we warmed to the darkening days, retreating inward, under blankets, warm drinks in our hands. At first, Hattie brightened, lightened, laughed easily. Tried to carve out some fresh happiness with me, now back in the house. At first, it was so nice and easy. Too easy, though, as I should have known. I had readied myself for what Jameson had warned me against, but Hattie’s kindness upon the first blush of my arrival had deceived me into trusting that all that was needed was a little help.
Hattie had changed, however, and within a short expanse of time, it became apparent. Parts exaggerated, made bigger and bolder. When she went to bed early, it was because her mood had become sour and angry, and she often disappeared on the heels of a perceived slight. We—Jameson and I—brushed these off. Flipped the tape to the other side, kept chatting. When she stayed up late, a darkness settled around her, and she invariably snapped at Jameson or me. The next day she would be a sleepy and sullen contrarian. It was as though we were seeing the other side of the coin of our first summer. It reminded me of when she and Jameson had been trying to conceive, but louder, worse.
And that conception, that secret, loomed over me when I was with Jameson. Did she suspect, or was I being paranoid? Jameson himself never let on that he thought of it, never brought it up—as though it was so long ago that he’d forgotten. But how could I forget when we lived under the very roof where he had touched me with such tenderness? Whatever resentment I had for him was washed away by being near him again, and I felt myself leaning towards him and away from Hattie.
Hattie constantly picked fights with Jameson, and I soon saw what he had meant when he’d called me in desperation. She was cruel, loud, self-pitying, and he was helpless at defending himself. He seemed so lost to me. The ground had shifted under him, the balance tipped. I often stood up for him when Hattie accused him of any number of character shortcomings, which I see now was the wrong tack. Jameson would look between us, unsure of what to do. Eventually Hattie would nod her head in what I thought was a conciliatory way, but was really her confirming what she understood to be a conspiracy against her.
“I thought you came here to help me, not him,” Hattie muttered mutinously at me after a particularly tense evening. Jameson had gone upstairs quietly after Hattie had blamed him for Elliot’s willful nature, an irony apparent to all but her.
“I did, Hattie. But come on. You’re being awful to him.”
“You don’t understand. He’s my husband, Penny. I think I know him better than you. Plus, you haven’t even been here.” This was always her first defense. That I had gone, left, and so could never understand.
“Yes, I know.” I paused, reaching out a hand. “But I’m here now, Hattie, for you. Truly. And Elliot. I want to help.”
She sniffed, and looked at me with watery eyes. “Okay. I know. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to,” I chastised.
But she continued to push him. For so long, and so hard—I had witnessed half a year of it since I’d arrived—that when, during one fight when she told him that she hated it when he was home, he caved in.
“Maybe I should move out,” he offered. I could see that he was close to crying, and my heart broke for him. “This is no way for Elliot to grow up.”
“Maybe you should.” Hattie countered, her face hardened.
I leapt to my feet. “No! I should leave if anyone should.”
“No. She needs you here,” Jameson said gently.
“Fuck off, Jameson, you don’t know what I need,” Hattie snapped.
“Hattie!” I cried. “Please. Let me be the one to go. You two work things out.” Did I mean it? Part of me thought perhaps I was interfering, and I had hoped no one would take me up on my offer to leave.
“No, no. Penny,” Jameson said gently, putting his hand on my arm, “this is not because of you. This is a long time coming. I think maybe we need time apart.” Hattie scoffed and lit a cigarette. He continued, quietly, “You two need to spend some time together, also. Without me here.”
“Elliot needs you, Jameson,” I pleaded.
“And he will have me, just as much,” he said, with the first note of strength I’d heard all night. “I will get a place nearby and see him just as often. Without,” he waved his hand around the room, “all this.”
&n
bsp; And then, as it always was, there were three.
* * *
I offered to look after Elliot a couple of days a week, and on the others, I took him to the daycare where I had been rehired at my old job. I saw Jameson there, as the daycare was next to the school, and my heart ached when we made small talk at the end of the day, when we traded Elliot between us, and behaved like the fragmented couple that we were in some ways. We shared something, he and I. A secret. A son. His goodness, his dignity, rubbed off on me in those moments.
Hattie often slept in past her work time and rose in the late morning disheveled and irritable, hardly acknowledging us before leaving for her job at the library or with the author in the big house down the road. She said less and less to me as time wore on, as routine settled in. Even after Elliot went to bed, if she was home, she sank into dark moods, staring out the window at the night, at nothing, as though I wasn’t there at all. She kissed me on the cheek occasionally, as though just noticing me for the first time that day, and thanked me, her voice scratchy and small. She was disappearing, vanishing in sighs and coughs. Elliot spoke of her hardly at all, but when he did, he did so as though he, too, was talking about someone in convalescence, in childlike hushed tones.
“Mommy doesn’t have scissors that I can use,” he’d whisper.
“Don’t ask Mommy, she’s tired.”
“Mommy doesn’t eat with me, she’s always full.”
And I thought of Hattie, pushing her food around her plate, sullen as a child, thin as a shadow.
When Jameson came to the house to pick up Elliot occasionally, I knew how the house would appear to him. Seeing its slow decline, like that of our red-headed wonder, whose hair and shiny Hattie-ness seemed to be fading into stringy disrepair. I cleaned up as best I could before he came, made excuses for where Hattie was, when oftentimes she was not at work at all but moping about in the next room, a kimono housecoat wrapped loosely around her thin frame, eating something out of a jar like a stray cat. He was polite enough to pretend not to see a swath of fabric moving between rooms or to hear a self-pitying sniff from somewhere. He nodded, and smiled, and thanked me very much for caring for Elliot, like he’s your own, he said quietly one day.
23
Jameson was gone, but the fight was still in Hattie. She hadn’t wholly disappeared into quiet sadness, but had taken to erupting when I least expected it.
Hattie’s erratic bouts of energy were becoming tinged with something toxic, and I noted the change with rising alarm. Her boisterousness, which, for so long was a quality that gave a rush, made one feel daring and part of something fun, was too much now, too potent. She was a darker version of herself, and I was fighting to keep her happy, but there was Elliot now. I had a child to protect. Not quite mine, maybe, but I needed to look out for the lives that still mattered. I had started helping out with Elliot to keep Hattie grounded, but the result was that she was becoming redundant. A swaying figurehead. In those early months and years when I grew into my life with Elliot, Hattie became like a drunken will-o’-the-wisp, soft hair and lips one moment and all claws the next. She reminded me, in those awful moments, of the other unpredictable force of my life, of Buddy. I found myself frightened in a place deep inside me, but that only served to make me steel myself against it. She was a terrible pixie queen, and my hold on her—the thing in our youth that had kept her so close to me—was slipping. So, too, was her place in my heart. That third person: my boy, he became my first. She needed me, though. She needed me to care for Elliot, and saw that I was doing this with growing interest and love every day.
She watched me, I knew. A cigarette in her fingers, keeping tabs while I taught him to tie his shoes, made his lunches and practiced reading. She made excuses not to come to his first day of school when he was five, and so Jameson and I, something awkward and unsaid looping through us as we held Elliot’s hands on either side, took him down the same sidewalk that Hattie and I had taken as children. She watched from behind the curtains, sunken, sad eyes brimming with anger. I wasn’t taking anything of hers. Not the way it seemed. She was unfit.
There was a building pressure in the house. There were days when I thought she was about to throw me out, but then she would snap at Elliot instead, and he was confused and unsettled. His loyalty, too, was divided. He wanted desperately to please Hattie but would always ask for my assistance and came to rely on me, regardless of whether Hattie was there. She became like a dated caricature of a father—short-tempered and uninvolved in the daily goings on of the house. She had little influence now, and Elliot noticed that there was a shift even in the basic makeup of the house.
“Where did all this food come from?” Elliot asked me once, marveling at the store of food in the fridge. “We never have this stuff.”
Elliot went to the school where Jameson taught. We took the short walk together in the mornings, and in the afternoons, I waited for him to run happily out of the school with a skip and a crooked smile. My boy. And there it was. He had moved into my heart, my mind, taken up residence, occupied all my plans. I had no choice in the matter. Mothers know. That soft, fleshy face, the lovely hair at the back of his neck, his tiny mouth, his wide eyes and husky laugh. Elliot. I had started to breathe his name, and all the rest, all the sadness and bargaining, the bitterness and rationalizations, broke into small pieces. Mine.
Hattie had faded out of our day-to-day lives for the most part. I didn’t account for where she might be, who with; I didn’t worry or wonder. My life was Elliot now. I should have taken more notice. She was out there, her hold on our lives—and our secrets—loosening.
Once, on my way home from running an evening errand, I saw Hattie on the patio at Dusty’s, giggling into the ear of Mac Williams. I slowed my car down to watch, in shock. She put her hand on his arm, and turned to look, catching my eye. She hardened. Someone honked their horn, and I started, hitting the gas.
* * *
“Why am I even here anymore?”
Hattie, sitting at a wingback chair, after I had dropped Elliot at Jameson’s townhouse. I closed the door, placing my keys carefully down. I said nothing.
“Seriously. What the hell am I here for? You obviously don’t want me here.”
“Hattie.”
“What? Am I wrong? You came back and took over. I see you, the way you’ve just moved into my life. You’re gonna tell me I’m wrong? You’re not waiting for the day I up and go? You and Jameson? So you can do what you’d always wanted to do? You took my life, Penny!” She banged her fist on the arm of the chair, and it made me jump. “You fucking took it all.”
I kept my voice calm, but I knew. She had always been able to read me. There was truth in all of it. And worse, now she was unafraid to say it.
“I never wanted that,” I said, quietly, “I told you that from the beginning, Hattie. I came back for you, for God’s sake. Again. I came back for you. I am only trying to help, while you—”
“What? While I what?”
“I don’t know. Get back on your feet.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? You think you can do better, right?”
“God, you’re paranoid.” I paused, staring at her, and shook my head slowly. “Jameson was right.”
“Excuse me?” She whispered.
“He called me back here. Because you’re a mess. You’re not in your right mind at all, and—well, you’re a mother if you’ve forgotten, and you can lash out at me if you want, but this is the bed you’ve made, and now you’ve pretty well shit in it.”
Silence. And then a sharp, whispering strike.
“Fuck you, Penny, you fucking bitch.” She inhaled and stared at me. “My bed? This is my bed? Funny, because I really feel like it’s been your bed I’ve been lying in all these years.”
I froze, the memory of Jameson’s body on mine. “I don’t even know what—”
She stood up quickly, and the chair nearly toppled over, teetering back, then forth, on an ornate wooden leg, for an exten
ded moment. “I’m sick of the sight of you,” she spat. She padded out of the room, and I heard her climbing the stairs. And maybe I should have cared what she thought then, but I didn’t. All that mattered now was Elliot. I was mildly aware of an itch, though, a thought that she might tell me to leave, and I rolled over in my mind thoughts of custody and of how I might keep the boy, my boy, Jameson’s and my son, close.
And if anything surprised me about that fight, it was my own fury, my own protective rage. I did love my life here, and I did have a claim to it now. I had earned it. I had fought for it. She was too weak to keep it.
Later, Hattie emerged, clean and smartly dressed to tell me she was picking up her son from Jameson’s. She slammed the door, and I watched her pass in front of the house. Long, thin strides, her anger unfolding in waves behind her. I felt it coming, a manic wind, a change. I knew something was going to break and I needed to be careful. And it struck me, this coming and going, this helping and hurting, that Hattie and I had been dancing around for our lives.
I was terrified that she was going to take Elliot away. The fear struck deep inside me, and I wrung my hands and waited, the clocks ticking loudly, for his return. When I heard him coming down the street, I rushed outside, my feet moving before I could think, and he ran to me. I saw Hattie walking slowly behind him, watching all the while. Our eyes met. I did not look away.
I knew, in that moment, that I didn’t choose her. I chose my son, I chose my life. This life. I would push her out, if I had to, to hell with the consequences. That was the moment. With the sun high in the sky and our mother’s picture on the mantel, a blue jay on the porch and the house creaking its approval, the moment I said to hell with you, my sister, my heart, my darling love. I’m taking what’s mine.
Sister of Mine Page 15
