The Secret Language of Sisters

by Luanne Rice

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “Miss Muirhead …”

  “Please call me Martha,” she said.

  She was ancient, and it felt weird, but also, somehow, right. “Okay, I’ll try. Martha.”

  “There, that was easy, right?”

  I nodded. I looked around. Bronze statues of graceful girls, looking more like sprites or spirits than humans, danced in the hall. Bookcases everywhere were crammed to overflowing. Dark and formal portraits of somber-looking ancestor types shared wall space with delicate watercolors of local scenes of the river and marsh and churches and Long Island Sound, impressionistic oil paintings of the herb garden, house, and bouquets of day lilies. Tall windows were wide open and overlooked the garden and woods, with glimpses of the river beyond. Outdoors, more sculptures stood along the crunched-up clamshell paths.

  A crash of sudden discordant music drifted through the house. Lucan barked, muffled by rooms and walls and moth-eaten oriental rugs and tapestries and all those books. Slater called out, “Everything’s okay!”

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “He’s moving Althea’s sculptures; he must have bumped the one by the piano. All these bronzes you see are from her Sisters Series. They’re of us, when we were young. She had a forge and a kiln, out in the backyard, in one of the little buildings by the river. I was always so excited to see what she would do next.”

  Two shabby chairs of worn green velvet, with polished wood arms and claw feet, faced the hearth. The fireplace was made of small round stones, with a smoke-smudged wooden mantel. A hand-painted banner decorated the mantel: wildflowers, starfish, and scallop shells, and, in graceful script, the words:

  Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

  “My sister painted that quote,” Martha said. “It’s from Roald Dahl.”

  “The author who wrote James and the Giant Peach?” I asked.

  “And Matilda,” she said, smiling. “Your namesake.”

  “But those are children’s books.”

  “We were children once,” she said. She stared at me a long time, and I had the feeling she was seeing straight into my troubled thoughts about Roo and my texts. I must have blushed, because she let me off the hook. Smiling, she led me into the kitchen.

  She had baked sugar cookies earlier, and they were cooling on a rack by an enameled stove so old it looked as if it belonged in a museum. She handed me a pale-pink glass plate, and I arranged the cookies on it. Opening the refrigerator, which looked as antique as the stove, she removed a pitcher of iced tea. It contained slices of lemon and orange as well as sprigs of vegetation. She chuckled at the expression on my face.

  “You don’t like greenery in your tea?” she asked.

  “I’ve never had it before,” I said politely, vowing that the stuff would never cross my lips.

  “I brew the tea fresh, with Earl Grey from Fortnum & Mason, their Piccadilly store in London, and then I add herbs from my garden to make it very local. Today we have white lavender, thyme, and rosemary.”

  I leaned over to smell, and then she poured me a glass over ice. I was thirsty from my bike ride, and I have to admit, it was delicious, like drinking the spicy-salty air itself.

  We loaded up a big silver tray. Martha started to carry it, but I took it from her. She was quite tall, but stooped and slightly frail. When we walked down the hall, I glanced through an open door. A black cat lay curled up on a window seat. I saw a straight-backed chair positioned by a vintage brass telescope pointing up at the sky.

  “For watching birds?” I asked.

  “For watching stars,” she said. “And the moon.”

  At that I thought of Newton. He would love this old scope. Instead of picturing the owls I might see gliding from the tall oaks to hunt along the riverbanks, I imagined Newton there by the window, gazing up at star clusters and nebulae. Martha walked over to the cat, seemed to whisper something to it. I felt shaken, to be thinking of Newton so vividly—instead of my stargazing sister.

  “I did something horrible,” I heard myself saying.

  “Nothing could be that bad,” she said.

  “I texted my sister while she was driving,” I said. “And that’s why she nearly died. I’m not sure anything could be worse.”

  Martha took the tray out of my hands. She placed it on a nearby table and reached out, as if to touch my shoulder. Maybe she wanted to reassure me, but I couldn’t stay to find out. I ran out the door and jumped onto my bike, and I rode as fast as I could away from Casa Magica with no idea of where I wanted to go.

  Eugenie, one of my favorite nurses in Boston so far, was trying to get more circulation into my feet by massaging them. She grew up in Maine, and came to Boston when she got married, and always told me stories about her two daughters—we’d bonded over the two-girls-in-a-family dynamic, using my new letter board to talk.

  Jen Whitaker, from the hospital’s AAC department—augmentative and alternative communication—had delivered it to me my first day here, and we had had communication therapy every day since. The board contained all the letters of the alphabet, but instead of appearing in their regular ABC order, they were arranged by frequency of use. It also had space breaks, punctuation, and a button to start new paragraphs, or thoughts.

  Last night, Eugenie told me her younger daughter, who is two, ate a fig for the first time, and the older one, who is six, read to her from Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. Then they played with the family cats and called it a kitten party. Then the older one cried because the younger one got scratched. Sisters, even toddlers, feel each other’s pain. I wondered if the younger girl would grow up to be afraid of snow angels.

  And Owl Moon had been one of Tilly’s favorite books.

  “Hello, Roo,” a young doctor said in an English accent as he walked into my room. He was lanky and looked barely college age, with an angular face, wavy brown hair, and bright-blue eyes, and he was wearing a Franz Ferdinand T-shirt under his white lab coat. “I’m Dr. Howarth. Dr. Hill invited me from London to work with you.”

  “Roo, I will come back later, if that’s okay,” Eugenie said, closing the bottle of lotion.

  “Don’t leave on my account,” Dr. Howarth said. “Perhaps you can help Roo and me get to know each other.”

  “Of course,” Eugenie said. “Roo, Dr. Howarth is the absolute tops in the field of facilitated communication. We are very lucky to have him on your case.”

  Most of the doctors were my mother’s age or older, but he was so young and cute, and I liked his English accent, I felt embarrassed having him see me this way. I wanted Eugenie to pull the covers up to my neck so he couldn’t see my dry, scrawny, atrophied legs.

  “Doctor, let me start by introducing you to Roo’s photography. She took all of these photos,” Eugenie said, gesturing at them displayed around the room.

  “Brilliant,” he said.

  I watched him move slowly around the room, his back to me, as he took his time regarding my photographs. It surprised me that he would focus on them, especially if he was so important. The doctors here were busy, and although they were kind, they didn’t slow down for pleasantries.

  Dr. Hill, the much older neurologist, was so high up he rarely even made visits. His main work was studying the results of my tests. In the three weeks I had been here, I’d met him four times, and he intimidated me. He was as tall as Newton, and appeared so imposing, with his wavy white hair and dark wool suits, and the way people hushed when he spoke.

  But Dr. Howarth seemed down-to-earth. Not just because of his T-shirt, but also the way he was taking his time studying each of my photos as if he was really interested.

  “These are extraordinary,” Dr. Howarth said. “The landscapes in particular. They give me the feeling I am right there. The river, the beach, the driftwood log: beautiful. Where did you take the photos?”

  “A lovely place called Hubbard’s Point,” Eugenie said. “Roo has told us all about it. It’s the seaside section of Black Hall,
Connecticut, where Roo is from.”

  “You capture people very well, too, Roo. This girl in the rowboat …”

  Tilly.

  “Her laughing eyes, that floppy yellow sun hat, the energy in her shoulders—I feel I know her, just looking at her picture. She looks as if she’s about to row out into the bay and cause some kind of stir.”

  “That’s Tilly, Roo’s younger sister,” Eugenie said. “I’m sure you’ll meet her; she comes to visit often.”

  “And this fellow?”

  “Roo’s boyfriend, Newton. He is also a frequent visitor.”

  Always with Tilly. They carpooled to see me. I loved that they came and were supporting each other, but sometimes I wanted to see them each alone. I had secrets with each of them. Nothing deep and dark, but just the quiet private things that only you and the other person knew, that only you and the other person could understand.

  “Wow, this shot needs to be in National Geographic,” Dr. Howarth said, looking at the enlargement of “Star Trails,” the time-lapse photo I had taken that night at Little Beach, when Newton and I had said I love you. I couldn’t stand to think about how we’d kissed, how his arms had felt around me, how badly I wanted to go back to the beach with him.

  When he turned, Dr. Howarth was beaming, as if with pride in me, his new patient. He looked directly into my face, and I saw him see something in that very second—as no one else, not even Tilly or Newton—had so far.

  He saw my inner pain. The smile drained from his face, and he pulled a chair close to the side of my bed, even with my knee, because that is where my field of vision could take him in.

  “I’m sorry, Roo,” he said. Very naturally, as if we had known each other a long time, he took my hand.

  I whimpered, hating the sound.

  “She’s very brave, Doctor,” Eugenie said.

  “Yes,” he said, gazing into my eyes. “I know that. Brave girl.”

  My chest heaved with agony, thinking of that night with Newton, feeling so trapped, completely locked in, and knowing I would never get there again. Dr. Howarth’s blue eyes were full of sorrow.

  “You miss those times, don’t you?”

  I looked up, and a tear slipped from my eye.

  Dr. Howarth reached for a tissue, wiped the tear away. It was such a relief to be with someone who wasn’t determinedly upbeat, wasn’t just trying to cheer me up, tell me all would be well when it wouldn’t, not ever again. My lungs exploded with air. I was sobbing, but I sounded like a whale, not a human being.

  He stayed by my side.

  Eugenie held my feet, as if anchoring them to the bed, as if I were a balloon that might float away. After a minute, she covered my legs with a white blanket and left the room.

  “You have such talent,” Dr. Howarth said after a long time, once my heart had slowed and settled a bit. “Your photos say so much about you, Roo. You have a beautiful soul and a brilliant eye. You capture the perfect instant of beauty and action, and somehow you translate that exact moment, and the feeling that goes with it, to the viewer.”

  He reached toward the shelf under the window and brought out the letter board, the more sophisticated version of the alphabet Newton had created back in Connecticut, the one that had first allowed me to spell out my thoughts.

  “Would you like to talk?” Dr. Howarth asked.

  My left eye flicked up. Yes.

  He held up the board Jen and I had been working with, my lifeline to communicating with everyone.

  “This is very rudimentary,” he said, tapping the plastic surface. “It’s effective, but we can do better.”

  I moved my eye, and he realized I wanted to speak. Like Newton, he used his pen as a pointer to indicate each letter, and I spelled out my question.

  How?

  “I’m going to build you a computer,” he said. “My specific field of study is BCI—brain-computer interface. Your pupil response is very keen—that’s why we’ve been measuring your eyes’ response to light and movement. And you have binary function—one, two, your eye moved up and down. That switching is all an operating system needs to function. And it makes you a great candidate, Roo. We’re going to help you communicate by using a computer.”

  He held the pen, waiting for my response; I could hardly bear to state the obvious.

  My fingers do not work.

  “You see, the computer works with brain power, not muscle movement. We will fit you with electrodes that will hook up to a laptop. Your brain waves will do the rest.”

  Sounds hard.

  “It’s the opposite,” he said. “It’s easy, especially for someone like you. You are so creative, intuitive. I only have to look at your photographs to know that. You see beyond what others see, Roo.”

  I do?

  “Yes.” He held my hand again. “You have a beautiful, unusual vision. I want to talk, really talk with you, and that will happen better once I rig up this system for you. I’ve already built the basics; we shall go to work in earnest tomorrow, and you will be communicating freely very soon. I promise you.” He let go of my hand so he could work the board and get my response.

  I had so many questions. How will this work, why am I a candidate, am I dreaming? Instead, because what he had described sounded like science fiction, and because all the other questions tumbling around in my mind seemed too complicated, I asked,

  Promise how?

  “It’s what I do,” he said. “Roo, in a case like yours, your mind is acute, but it has become disconnected from your body. Everyday things like conversation become impossible. But this computer—it’s like a translator for your thoughts. The software will digitize your brain signals, and those neural spikes will transmit to the laptop and show up on the screen.”

  How?

  “Just like what we are doing here. Only instead of your eye movement telling me which letter you want, your brain waves will speak directly to the laptop, and the words will appear.”

  Training?

  He laughed. “Roo, training is the easy part. Once we implant the sensor and hook you up to the electrodes, you will get used to it very quickly. Within an hour or two, I promise—see, another promise! The hard part is finding a patient like you.”

  Really?

  “Oh, yes. And I hope you will talk to me once we get to that point. I want to hear more about your photos, and why you love the night sky so much. And all about your life, what matters to you.”

  Thank you.

  “I’ve never had a patient like you,” he said. “LIS—locked-in syndrome—is so rare. When I was at medical school in the UK, I observed only one case, an elderly man who had had a stroke. It made me very happy to be on the team that helped him regain abilities to communicate with his wife, his son and grandchildren. I have worked with others since, and I’ve spent a long time developing software to help people. But you are different, Roo.”

  How?

  “All human beings are valuable, deserving of help. But you are gifted.” He glanced up at the wall, at my photos.

  I thought, but did not spell out, That’s what my father used to say. It filled me with emotion.

  “I want the girl who took these pictures to get behind a camera again.”

  My eyes stung.

  Not possible, I spelled out.

  “If I have anything to do with it, it is.”

  I wanted to say, Don’t get my hopes up. Instead, I spelled again, How?

  “Your eye, and your pupil response, and the system I will build for you. I will find a way to connect the computer with your camera. The only thing is, I want to be with you when you take your first photo. Will you let me do that?”

  Yes.

  “We’ll be spending a lot of time together. You’re going to get tired of me.” He held my hand again, and his blue eyes were full of warmth and humor.

  My face felt hot, and I knew I had turned scarlet. Inside, my heart flipped, and I felt prickles racing into my face. I felt instantly guilty, as if I were betraying Newton.
/>
  “Do you think you’ll get tired of me?” Dr. Howarth asked.

  No.

  “Wait and see,” he said, and laughed. “I tend to be a bit obsessive when I get started on a project. But I am determined that you will be shooting photos again before summer.”

  I hope.

  “Hope matters a lot,” he said. “All the medicine, all the science in the world can’t heal if you don’t have hope. But I am talking to the girl who photographs the stars, who snapped those shots right there.” He gestured at the wall. “And that girl knows hope. She knows the world beyond, and the possibilities. Dream of the possibilities, okay, Roo?”

  Okay.

  “Good.” He squeezed my hand again. His blue eyes scoured mine, reading my emotions. They were all over the place: happiness, excitement, trepidation, fear. Then he winked, smiling.

  In my mind I winked back. And I felt as if he knew, because his smile got wider.

  Right after English class I stopped by my locker and got slashed in the heart. Someone had taped an article from the morning paper to the gray metal door:

  TEEN TEXTING CAUSE OF NEAR-FATAL ACCIDENT

  New evidence has surfaced in the case of Black Hall honor student Ruth Ann McCabe and the accident that nearly took her life in February. Her mobile phone, assumed lost in the marsh where she crashed her family station wagon, has been found.

  Police analysis revealed that texts had been sent between Ruth Ann and a family member just before she drove the car off the road into a tributary of the Connecticut River. Ruth Ann had been on her way to pick up her sister, Mathilda, at a nearby museum. A talented photographer, Ruth Ann, known to friends and family as Roo, had stopped to take photos of the winter scene, and was running late.

  “This is tragic,” Black Hall High principal Chase Gordon said. “We cannot stress strongly enough the importance of never texting while driving. Our school has always been committed to this cause, and we have been proud of our student body for following it. Ruth Ann’s accident has left us all heartbroken and unfortunately illustrates how serious this dangerous behavior can be.”