The Girls

by Lori Lansens

  We eased into the backseat, Ruby fussing over her mound of pillows, I tired of being sore. It was early and I didn’t want to go straight home to Leaford. Maybe I was afraid I’d see Frankie Foyle on the street and he’d suspect my secret if he saw my face, or maybe I just didn’t want to go somewhere the same when I was so profoundly changed.

  “Let’s go to the zoo,” I blurted.

  Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash did not respond right away. “What about if we go for Chinese in Windsor and head home?” Aunt Lovey asked hopefully.

  “I don’t want to go to the zoo,” Ruby stated definitively, which made me furious. I was the injured party. Me.

  “I want to go to the zoo.”

  Uncle Stash glanced at Aunt Lovey. “It’s okay. We go to zoo.”

  Ruby pouted until the Dramamine kicked in.

  The zoo was not crowded, and the day was not hot. We rode the train, which always gave me a thrill. I didn’t care what animals we looked at, so Uncle Stash led the way. Bony and tired, he was so happy to be reunited with his family; he forgot we were not children and that I’d just given birth.

  I didn’t feel nostalgic about the orangutans. The polar bears left me cold. Watching amphibians in small glass enclosures in the wall, I wondered why I’d wanted to come at all. I thought the reason might reveal itself to me, the way reasons sometimes do. I ate a chocolate-covered frozen banana and felt somewhat better.

  In the tunnel on the way home, I fell asleep. I dreamed that Ruby was clutching a pole and I was desperate to pull her away. I didn’t know why I had to pull her away until I heard a splashing sound and saw that my baby was drowning in the bathtub, which I couldn’t reach because Ruby was clutching the pole. I awoke with a start, to hear Uncle Stash saying, “Yes, sir. We just went for one day over to zoo for the day, sir,” to the border guard on the Canadian side of the tunnel.

  I have thought of my daughter every day since she was born. She is tall. She looks like Ruby. Beautiful, stylish, and original. Bit of a loner. In that awkward stage. Big reader. Smart. Athletic. Though of course Taylor will never know it, and I only just realized it myself, I am writing this book for her.

  It’s Ruby.

  My sister’s Red Wings choked this year. Whiffer and Rose were really counting on them to step it up in their final few games, but there you go. It was a disappointing end to an amazing season. (I don’t care about sports so I’m being kinda sarcastic.)

  The day after the Wings were knocked out, Whiffer came to work with a pennant for my sister. It was a souvenir from the game that he and his buddies were at the night before. Rose waved the flag like an idiot, and then, suddenly out of nowhere, she just started to sob. And she never cries. Even Whiffer said, God, Rose, it’s only a game. Then he went on and on about how well the Pistons were doing in basketball. He said she needed to think positive.

  I knew she wasn’t crying about the hockey though. She was crying because it suddenly got to her the way it sometimes gets to me that she won’t see another season or cheer another goal. You think about these words final last never a lot, and there are not many things, when you come right down to it, that you’ll be happy to see the end of.

  Whiffer promised Rose a long time ago that one day he’d take her (well, us, but her) to see a Red Wings game at Joe Louis Arena (which you can see from Windsor when you’re standing on the bank of the Detroit River), but it never happened. I hated the idea of freezing my buns off in those uncomfortable seats anyway. Plus, what if they put the camera on us, and we showed up on the giant screen like some big joke? Something like that would kill Rose. It would have meant something to her, though, to see her Red Wings in person. It’s too bad. (Now I’m not being sarcastic.)

  Rose’s second-favorite team, the Calgary Flames, made it to the finals but lost the Cup to Tampa Bay, which may or may not be because of a bad call by the referees in the game where a goal was not counted but, in the instant replay, you could tell for sure it was over the line. (Even I could see it was over the line!) I know it would have meant a lot to her to have one of her favorite teams win the Cup. Though I don’t get why Calgary is her second-favorite team when it seems like it should be the Maple Leafs, because Toronto is closer than Calgary.

  Rose says you choose your favorite team for proximity, but your second-favorite team can be anyone, as long as they’re in your division or your country. She was getting emotional about the Flames bringing the Cup back to Canada. So I asked Rose where her national pride would be if her Detroit Red Wings were playing the Toronto Maple Leafs or the Edmonton Oilers. She said favorite-team loyalty, decided by proximity, presides over second-favorite-team loyalty, decided by country and division, so she’d still root for her Wings. That’s how Rose explains it. But it still doesn’t make sense to me.

  Fair enough she was depressed about the hockey, but her Pistons are in the play-offs, and Whiffer says they’re definitely gonna beat the Lakers because they’ve had solid leadership and coaching and they play like a team.

  Yesterday Rose went on the Internet and found a list of celebrities who have had brain aneurysms and whatnot. She printed the list up and gave it to me. She hates talking about the aneurysm, so doing that was really quite a gesture. She acts like the aneurysm is hers, because it’s in her brain, but the freakin’ thing is gonna kill me too, so I say it’s just as much mine. She still won’t talk to me about future plans, and by that I mean the legal stuff. Basically, what happens to our money. And our bodies. But I have to say that her giving me that list of celebrities just about made me cry.

  Last week Rose and I were sitting on our big rocking chair on the porch and she started slapping at her legs, which was weird, and she said, God, these cucumbers are killing me. Cucumbers. She meant mosquitoes. Then yesterday she was pouring tea in her thermos for work, and I asked her the time and she said, Green. She tried to say something else, but it came out Blaymuth. Blaymuth. It’s not even a word. I saw Rose in the mirror, and the look on her face upset me because it did not look like my sister. Rose is a person who never gets confused. When I asked her to tell me what was happening, she moved so I couldn’t see her reflection. I said, Rose, please let me see you. But she took us right out of the kitchen and into the bedroom and got out her laptop with no regard for me. Like I was not even there. So we didn’t speak to each other for about a day because I was so mad. And humiliated.

  I have not been staying angry with Rose for as long as I used to, for obvious reasons. Eventually we started talking, and she admitted she’s been having some weakness in her legs. It might be a sign that the aneurysm is getting bigger and putting more pressure on her brain. Our brains. Dr. Singh will say the same thing he says every time. It’s getting bigger. We can’t do anything.

  It could be any moment, or you may still have a few days or weeks or months.

  We joke about Dr. Singh a lot. I do his accent really well, but Rose says I shouldn’t because it’s racist.

  Rose had this great idea that we should make a video for the kids at the library. It would be too sad to say good-bye, and what would we say anyway? We decided to tape ourselves reading some of the kids’ favorite books instead.

  I did The Big Red Barn and Rose did Where the Wild Things Are for the little kids. Then we did one of Rose’s poems (which I drew hilarious pictures for). This is one we read to the grade threes and up, and they laugh like crazy. I would never tell Rose this, but I think it is one of her better poems.

  (She’d hate me for that because it took her all of twenty minutes to write and she has taken hours and days to write shorter poems about more important things and she even took three weeks to write a six-line poem called “Kiss.” But there you go.)

  It’s Not Snot

  A little boy named Bobby Gadd

  Was sent to bed for being bad.

  His mother saw him once, then twice

  Do a thing that isn’t nice.

  He stuffed his finger in his nose,

  Found something that was not a rose


  Then put it in his mouth he did!

  His mother simply flipped her lid.

  You just picked your nose! she said.

  Bobby grinned and shook his head.

  I saw you pick! I saw you chew!

  I think just now you swallowed too!

  Bobby! Son! Your gut will rot!

  Don’t worry, Mom. It’s not snot.

  Mother knew her boy had lied.

  To your room right now! she cried.

  The moral of the story is—Don’t eat snot.

  For the video, Rose read the poem while I flipped my drawings, which had dialogue bubbles for all the talking parts. We did it three times because Rose stumbled over some of the words, even though she knows them by heart. At the very end of the tape we say good-bye, but in a see-you-tomorrow kind of way instead of a forever kind of way. I asked Rose if she wanted to make a tape for anyone else, but she doesn’t.

  She is happy that Nick Todino is driving us to see Dr. Singh in Toronto tomorrow. I’d sooner go by bus, but Rose is worried about making bathroom stops and whatever. Last week my sister lost her balance (which is happening more and more and is obviously causing us concern) when we went to see Nonna, who doesn’t usually recognize us now and doesn’t always seem to understand that we are two girls. Anyway, Nick caught Rose and me and helped us to the couch. Even though he complained about how heavy we were, I guess it was still nice of him not to just let us fall. There are some people who would have panicked and been afraid to touch us. That’s just how it is. Still, I’m not big on Nick. I think it’s partially because his son Ryan tried to drown us when we were kids. That’s a hard thing to forgive.

  Our birthday is five weeks away. Today, which is June, was one of those strange days when the sun shines on one side of the street and it rains on the other. First there was no wind at all, then suddenly the sheers were blowing in the living room and a million green spinners were falling from the maple tree out back, and Rose and I had to hurry outside to get the garbage-can lid before it blew over to Todinos’ and put it back on tight so the squirrels don’t get into it later. If the squirrels do get at the garbage, then we have to ask Nick to come and clean it up for us, which is embarrassing, plus, I hate it when we have to ask Nick for favors. He’s been living with Nonna for about five years. Uncle Stash and Aunt Lovey died before they ever met him, which still seems weird to me because it seems like Nick’s been around forever. He has a second family in Windsor that he’s court-ordered to stay away from. Nonna was happy when Nick got a job driving delivery for the Oakwood Bakery in Chatham, because that meant he wasn’t a total loser, but he got fired the first day for having beer in the bread truck—which proved he was. That happened years ago, and I don’t believe he’s looked for another job to this day. He says he’s on disability.

  I’ve been writing my invitations on my yellow legal pad, so Rosie thinks I’m writing chapters for the book. I think I’m freaking her out a little, about how fast and how much I’m writing. I’ve put the invitations in little envelopes and given them to the guests when she’s not paying attention. It is quite fun being sneaky, but I wish I’d done this surprise party thing years ago when there was no aneurysm and no worry that all this planning might be pointless. I’ve already paid for the cake, and Nonna has seven dozen meatballs in her freezer. Whiffer’s bringing his stereo from home and a bunch of Rosie’s favorite CDs.

  Even if we don’t make it to our birthday, people should dance.

  I’m not much on traveling because I get really bad car sickness almost every time I get into a moving vehicle. Even watching television, certain shots of movement can make me dizzy. Rose has probably already written reams about how I’ve ruined a million opportunities because I don’t travel well. I have tried sucking gingerroot and wearing acupressure wristbands, but nothing works. We went on a few family trips when we were kids, like to the zoo and to Aunt Poppy’s in Hamtramck and to Niagara Falls, and the big one to Slovakia. And quite a few trips to the doctor too. But it was a big deal to get around because of my tricky tummy. It still is a big deal. We’re going to the archaeology museum in London, though. Even if it kills me.

  Uncle Stash used to drive to Ohio to visit his mother once a year. The drive was too much for me, so Rose and I couldn’t go, and Aunt Lovey wouldn’t leave us in anyone else’s care. So Uncle Stash went alone. We had never met Mother Darlensky, though, technically, she was our only living grandmother.

  Then one day Uncle Stash’s mother called and said she was dying and wanted to see Uncle Stash one last time. Aunt Lovey said they’d been getting calls for twenty-five years about how Mother Darlensky had this fatal illness or that fatal illness and it never turned out to be anything. But Uncle Stash believed it. And he said that even if his mother didn’t have a fatal illness, she probably was dying of old age and misery.

  Aunt Lovey said we couldn’t drive all the way to Ohio, which would have meant seven hours in the car for me and Rose, so Uncle Stash sent his mother bus fare to Chatham. She said she couldn’t come because she was too sick, then she changed her mind, and there we were, on the way to pick her up at the bus depot—which was really a gas station/ convenience store near the mall in Chatham.

  Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash had a big fight because Uncle Stash said we shouldn’t call his mother Gramma, but the Slovak word, Stara Mama. And then he said that his mother should sit in the front seat because she was sick and old, which Aunt Lovey didn’t seem very sympathetic about. Especially considering she spent most of her life as a nurse.

  Aunt Lovey looked shocked when Mrs. Darlensky got off the bus because she really did look sick. She had thin white hair at the sides of her head and not much at all on the top. She was tiny and bony, and she wheezed when she climbed down the steps of the bus. I thought Uncle Stash would give her a big hug, but they didn’t touch at all. Not even hands. He said something about her not looking very well, and she said something to him in Slovak that made him hide his eyes. Aunt Lovey had said, Hello, Mother Darlensky, we’re so pleased you can finally meet our daughters. And then Rose and I stepped forward. We were probably smiling the same way at the same time, and we hate when we do that because it makes us feel stupid. Uncle Stash’s mother looked scared.

  Uncle Stash had sent his mother our school pictures each year and he sent the pictures that he took himself too, the ones he snapped with the huge lenses. The pictures Uncle Stash took were the best and looked the most like us, but I guess seeing us in person can be intense. Mrs. Darlensky fanned herself with her hands and said some Slovak words I’d never heard Uncle Stash say before, so I knew they were not swearwords, and she asked to sit down in the car.

  Aunt Lovey took Mrs. Darlensky’s elbow and helped her to the car and held the front door, like she’d never questioned that Uncle Stash’s mother should sit there.

  Mrs. Darlensky turned to look at us in the backseat and shook her head. Then she looked at Uncle Stash and said some more words in Slovak, but Uncle Stash acted like he hadn’t heard a thing.

  Oh, shit. The phone just rang. It’s after ten o’clock!

  Oh my God! Whiffer just called! He just about blew the whole surprise party!!! Rose answered because she had the remote phone on her side. She was shocked it was Whiffer because he’s never called before. Let alone at ten o’clock!

  Thank God he recognized her voice right away. He made up some lame excuse about wanting to borrow one of her CDs, but I’m worried now that she’s gonna think he’s interested in her, and I don’t think Rose needs to deal with a broken heart with all the other stuff we have going on.

  I’m too tired to keep writing. I don’t know how Rose does it, but I’m starting to understand why.

  Summer

  Nonna used to make a pie that she called “Quattro Stagione” (four seasons). It was divided into four segments, separated by a crisscrossed pastry wall, and filled with seasonal representations. Strawberries for spring. Peaches for summer. Apples for fall. And black-currant preserve
s for winter. I always chose spring. The strawberries. Ruby went for the preserves.

  Spring used to be my favorite season, but we hardly have spring anymore. Once there was a pause between the shiver of the crocus and the forsythia spray and the shy purple lilac and the chestnut bouquet. Now they shove and jostle in some rude rush to summer.

  We are dying.

  Ruby has already told you this. I know, because I know Ruby. I imagine it’s the first sentence she wrote on the yellow legal pad I gave her. Knowing Ruby, she wouldn’t have considered how to present that crucial bit of information about her main characters. Ruby’s not a writer. She can afford to be honest, but I can’t imagine beginning with such a confession. Wouldn’t you be afraid to read on? To be left, bereft, by people you might grow to love, or like, or who you’re just sort of curious about? Or maybe that’s exactly how I should have begun.

  Chapter One

  We are dying. So are you. Some of you may even know it.

  I have an aneurysm. A wall in a vein, in my brain, has stretched and ballooned, and is getting larger, and will eventually burst. My sister and I are going to die because of this aneurysm. This will happen tonight when I’m flossing my teeth. Or Wednesday afternoon, while Ruby is reading a Caldecott book to the kids. Or in two and a half months, on a sticky-hot afternoon when all I want to do is lose myself in John Irving while Ruby watches her TV. There won’t be any miracle. The aneurysm isn’t going away. But I hope it can contain itself for a while. Until our effects are sorted out. Until this book is done. Until, from our quiet place, in the lane beneath the window, we have the chance to listen once more to the Senior Chorus at Holy Cross and their glorious harmonies at Christmas.