The Sunshine Sisters

by Jane Green

  “James told me you were having an affair. He turned to me, of all people, to advise him. I don’t judge you, Lizzy, and God knows I was no saint in my marriage, but I wish I had parented you better. I wish you had had consequences.”

  “Are you serious?” Lizzy’s anger sparks. “You’re basically seconds away from dying and this is what you have to tell me? Jesus Christ.” She exhales loudly, standing up and pocketing the e-cigarette. “I’m not listening to this. I’ll just assume this is the ALS taking over your brain.” And, snorting with disdain, she walks out of the room.

  • • •

  Downstairs, Lizzy finds River, Daisy, and Nell on stools around the kitchen counter, drinking vodka.

  “I’ll go upstairs and see her,” says Nell, until Lizzy tells her she’s being a bitch.

  “She is?” Nell looks surprised. “I’m surprised she has the energy.”

  “Oh, that veil is definitely fucking on,” says Lizzy, pulling the e-cigarette back out of her pocket, because right now she needs it more than ever.

  “What did she say?” asks Nell.

  “That I was spoiled and selfish and never thought about anyone other than myself.”

  “She didn’t!” River’s eyes are wide.

  Nell shrugs with a reluctant grimace. “It’s not entirely untrue,” she says quietly.

  Lizzy shakes her head and inhales.

  River leans forward, watching his aunt inhale, then reaches out and takes it.

  “Niiice,” he says. “Indica, right? May I?”

  “No,” says Nell, snatching it away. “You’re not going to get high in front of your mother.”

  “You don’t really get high. Just mellow and sleepy,” says Lizzy. “Honestly, it’s the same as having a drink, and you’re all sitting here drinking vodka. I left her room feeling like I was going to kill someone and I feel better already. Seriously, I feel pretty mellow, all things considered.”

  “It’s true,” says River. “And this is better for you than drinking.”

  “Right. Whatever,” says Nell, holding out her hand. “Mothers first.” She takes a huge inhalation, sputtering and coughing when she’s done.

  “You’re supposed to sip it,” says River.

  “Great. Now you tell me,” she sputters, looking up at River when she has stopped coughing. “How on earth do you know so much about it anyway?”

  “I was a college student,” he says. “In Boulder, Colorado. How do you think I know?”

  Lizzy’s eyes light up. “I totally forgot you were in Boulder. You can send it to me now.”

  “No, he can’t. My son isn’t going to be your drug dealer.”

  “It’s legal in Colorado.”

  “And when it’s legal here you can get your own.”

  “Okay,” grumbles Lizzy as the e-cigarette is passed around, everyone sitting in silence for a while. “Where’s Meredith? And Billy?”

  “They went for a walk,” says Daisy. “They’ve been gone quite a while.”

  “Do you think she likes him?” Lizzy says, after a pause.

  “I think, after tonight’s news, it’s totally irrelevant,” says Nell.

  “Really? Because I think we could do with something to distract ourselves from the horror of our mother having a terminal illness and wanting us to murder her in three days.”

  “I don’t know that I see it as murder,” says Nell, serious as ever. “River and Daisy were just showing me beautiful stories of people who have terminal diseases, and in a couple of cases ALS, who have these parties where they surround themselves with friends and family to say good-bye before taking their own lives.”

  “I’m all for it,” says Lizzy, “in principle. But three days’ notice? You can’t summon us home because you’re sick, then tell us you’re dying, then tell us, whoops, actually, sorry I forgot to mention it, but that dying business is going to take place in three days. If we absolutely know there’s no relief, no cure, no nothing, I would totally do that, have some amazing party, but not in three days.”

  “You’re the one who said you were so busy you couldn’t stay. But anyway, it’s ALS,” says Nell. “There is no cure.”

  “And as I said before, Stephen Hawking.”

  “Who appears to be an anomaly. Even if she were to live, you know our vain, glamorous mother wouldn’t want to live like that.”

  “It’s not the point. Who knows what stem cell treatments may be available around the corner? We need more than three days.”

  Nell stares at her sister. “Look, I don’t entirely disagree with you. Part of me wants to respect her wishes, and the other part agrees that we need more time. She needs more time. But I don’t think it’s getting any better.”

  “We have three days. At least three days,” says River. “And everything always seems worse at night. Maybe she’ll feel differently in the morning. Maybe we’ll all feel differently in the morning.”

  They turn as they hear the front door open. A moment later Meredith walks into the kitchen, looking tired. Behind her, disheveled, sweaty, grinning, with a large bag hitched over his shoulder, is Derek.

  He drops the bag and puts his hands up with a smile and in a voice that is far too happy and far too loud, he exclaims, “Surprise!”

  thirty-five

  Meredith excused herself to take Derek upstairs. River snuck up and came back to report there were angry whispers coming from behind the closed door of their room.

  Billy is sitting at the kitchen counter, taking notes.

  “Tell me again . . .” he says, to no one in particular. Nell is at the sink washing up; River is drying; Daisy is at the kitchen table reading the paper. “When’s the wedding?”

  Lizzy drags a stool over. “We don’t know. We don’t think we’ve been invited because darling Derek disapproves of us. We’re all trying to push it out of our minds because he’s so awful.”

  Billy puts down his notebook and grimaces. “I am clearly supposed to be completely objective, but . . .” He pauses, deliberating whether or not to continue, before his words come out in a burst. “What the hell is she doing with him?”

  “We don’t know. I think she has such low self-esteem she thinks he’s the best she can get. And you have to admit, he is good-looking.”

  Billy looks horrified.

  “I know, I know, but that’s the only explanation,” says Lizzy.

  “Why would she have low self-esteem? She’s gorgeous and sweet and . . . I don’t know, she just seems lovely.” And he blushes as Lizzy shoves him in the arm.

  “And if you’d kissed her on that walk maybe she’d see that she doesn’t have to settle for the Dreadful Derek. Honestly, Billy, I know you’re here to get a story, but now that you’re here, you may as well make yourself part of the family for real. Couldn’t you have kissed her?”

  Billy shakes his head with an embarrassed laugh. “I may think she’s lovely, but I barely know her. That’s not my style.”

  “Know her, schmo her. So what? Urgh.” Lizzy’s shoulders sag. “I can’t believe that in the middle of all this, he’s here.”

  Nell turns from the sink, then comes to sit down with them. “I don’t think she’ll go through with it,” she says.

  “She won’t if this one declares his undying lust,” Lizzy says, gesturing to Billy and then raising her hands in the air, an innocent look on her face. “What? It’s not like no one’s noticed.”

  Billy suppresses a laugh. “I’m not going to kiss her on the night she just found out her mother is dying, much less when she is engaged to someone else, who just arrived from London.”

  Lizzy blanches, steadying herself on the counter, the smile dropping from her face. “Shit,” she whispers. “I can’t believe it. I keep going in and out of this reality. Our mother is dying.” She turns to Nell. “How is that possible?”

  “I k
now. I haven’t been close to her for years, but . . . I didn’t expect this to happen. Three days . . .”

  “Nothing’s going to happen in three days,” snaps Lizzy. “That’s the only thing I’m sure of.”

  Nell says nothing, thinking about her relationship with her mother, all the missed opportunities, the resentment she felt whenever her mother phoned. She remembers talking to someone in the café once, who said she had had a terrible relationship with her mother. She had hated her mother her entire life, and when her mother, a difficult, vain, vicious woman, had unexpectedly died, the daughter had felt relief. Her eyes had clouded over slightly. “That was ten years ago,” she said. “Now I just miss her.”

  I won’t miss my mother, Nell thought.

  Now, sitting in the kitchen, tuning out as Lizzy keeps talking, she’s not sure she’ll feel relief. All she knows is that her mother is dying, and not just dying but choosing to end her life soon, and she feels so much more than she expected.

  Panic. Her mind is flooded with all the things she has never said. Fear. Her mother, who has always been so frightening in her invulnerability, is somehow more terrifying now that she is vulnerable, frail, old.

  Nell has found something entirely unexpected happening since her mother told them. Sitting in her mother’s kitchen, alongside the fear and the panic and the impending loss, perhaps for the first time in her life, she feels a deep sense of love.

  Up until right this moment she never knew it was there.

  thirty-six

  The house is quiet, her mother asleep, everyone else gone home. Derek is waiting upstairs for her, in bed. She will be expected to make love and shudders at the thought, unaware that she grimaces.

  She had been deep in conversation with Billy as they walked along the boardwalk at Compo Beach, Billy listening as she spoke about her mother, their relationship, her sisters, how surprised she was at the way they had come together, stopped bickering, were actually kind of connecting. He was being there as a friend, he’d said, not as a journalist, and he felt like a friend, or at least, like someone who cared, even though he was a man she didn’t know.

  Occasionally she would glance at his face, thinking how handsome he was, how much she wanted to reach out and touch his skin, if only to see how it felt. When they had stopped, she had looked at his lips and was shocked to find herself picturing what it might be like to kiss him. They had talked and talked, and when her voice started quavering and tears spilled down her cheeks, he had rubbed her back until it passed.

  They were walking into the driveway when the town car pulled up. It must be a mistake, she thought; what would a town car be doing here this late at night? Surely they had the wrong address.

  The driver jumped out and opened the rear door before Meredith had a chance to tell him of his mistake, and out stepped Derek, with his handsome grin, disheveled from the flight, his shirt slightly askew, his hair tousled, and—not for the first time, but perhaps it was the first time she had noticed herself doing it—she recoiled.

  As Billy politely introduced himself, she stood back and looked at the two men, side by side. One was quiet, thoughtful, and seemed sincere. The other struck her in that moment as being not dissimilar to a Shakespearean fool.

  I hate him, she thought, even as she allowed herself to be hugged. I hate him.

  She allowed herself to be held, catching a whiff of his smell as her nose was buried into his neck, and although it was fair that he should be sweaty and tired, and smell slightly sour, it occurred to her that she hated his smell. She had always hated his smell.

  “I’d better go,” said Billy, later that night, after he had made notes in the kitchen, by which time Derek was resting upstairs. Billy said good-bye to the others, and Meredith walked him to the door, feeling an unexpected sense of loss that he was leaving.

  “Are you okay?” he said, just before he left.

  She shrugged. “I’m not great at surprises.”

  He looked at her. “All surprises, or just surprises you don’t really want?”

  And she felt a lump in her throat. “What am I going to do?” she whispered, hoping the desperation wasn’t as obvious as it felt.

  Billy stepped toward her. For a second, a terrifying, glorious, exciting second, she thought he might kiss her. He leaned toward her and said, an urgency in his voice, “Don’t settle. Don’t ever settle.” After kissing her on the cheek, he turned and left.

  Meredith stood on the doorstep and watched him climb into his car, watched him pull out of the driveway. What did that mean? she thought, even as she knew he was right. This wasn’t about Billy. There was something there, some chemistry between them, but that was irrelevant. What mattered was what he had said: Don’t settle. But all along she had been fighting everything in her that told her the same thing, had deliberately silenced the voice that screamed dissent. When she awoke in the middle of the night unable to breathe, feeling a terrifying weight on her chest, anxiety at what she was about to do filling her eyes, her ears, her nose, she would tell herself she was being stupid, would make list after list in her head of why Derek was right for her, why he was the sensible choice.

  She is settling. Billy knows it, and she knows it. And now Derek is here, and what the hell is she supposed to do?

  What she does is take a deep breath, turn off the rest of the downstairs lights, and go upstairs. When she is in their room with the door closed, she faces him down. In London, she is never able to face him down. She is always aware that he is her superior at work, a partner in their firm, someone who should be respected.

  But now he is here, in her childhood home, without an invitation, and for the first time in their relationship, she does not feel the need to defer to him. For the first time in their relationship, he is not her superior. For the first time in their relationship, she is thinking about what she wants, and not about him.

  “I’m really unhappy,” she says, facing him, ignoring his outstretched arms. “I can’t believe you just turned up here, in the midst of this family turmoil, without checking with me.”

  “Darling!” He steps toward her, but she steps back. “I know you’re going through trauma with your family. You always go through trauma with your family, so I came here to support you. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed with your reaction. All I do is think about you and how to make you happy, and you’re not the slightest bit grateful. If you want to know the truth, I think it’s completely within my rights to be rather appalled by your behavior. I understand that being around your family is upsetting to you, but for you to take it out on me, to somehow blame me for doing something so thoughtful, is—”

  “Stop it,” she hisses. “You always do this. You always take my words and twist them so I end up looking like the one who’s doing something wrong. I am trying to tell you that I did not want a surprise, that I’m not happy you didn’t tell me you were coming.” But even as she says the words, she feels herself weakening. This is what he does to her, forces her to express herself in a way that is palatable to him, rather than be honest about what she feels.

  “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to feel pressured,” says Derek. “I suspected your sisters might have said I couldn’t come if they had known. What?” He notices her shocked expression. “You think it’s not obvious that they don’t like me?” He snorts. “Look, I thought I was doing the right thing. Come here.” He opens his arms as Meredith falters before stepping in.

  What else can she do?

  I don’t have to settle, she tells herself, thinking of Billy. I don’t have to settle. But nor does she know how to get out of the trap she has laid for herself.

  Derek squeezes her tightly, then starts kissing her neck. Oh no, she thinks. I can’t do this. She steps back, adopting an expression of what she hopes is disappointment and apology.

  “I have my period,” she says, knowing Derek won’t touch her when she h
as her period. Her periods have miraculously gotten longer and longer since she has been with Derek. Before, they were an average of four days. Now, she is able to stretch them out for almost two weeks, during which Derek will not lay a finger on her.

  He frowns. “Didn’t you have a super long one that ended just as you were leaving for America?”

  Bugger. He wasn’t supposed to remember that.

  “I did.” Meredith nods, her brain frantically whirring. “And I stopped for a few days, then started again yesterday, which is so bizarre. I’m a little worried there’s something wrong.”

  Derek falls, hook, line, and sinker. “Poor darling. You must make an appointment with the gynecologist when you get home. Maybe there’s someone here you can see.”

  “I don’t have insurance here.”

  “Oh.” He pouts like a little boy. “I’ll just have to wait for my goodies until we get home. That’s okay. I’m tired anyway. Let’s just get into bed and cuddle.”

  He unbuttons his shirt as Meredith averts her eyes, trying not to compare him to Billy, although she can’t help thinking of Billy in his T-shirt, how attractive he is.

  She undresses herself, pulls on pajamas, and climbs into bed. She rolls on her side, facing away from him. She allows Derek to spoon against her back, because at least she doesn’t have to smell him, doesn’t have to look at him. She waits for him to start snoring before she unravels herself and steps quietly out of bed.

  She can’t do this tonight. The bed is too small, and her dislike of the man she is planning to marry too strong. She leaves and goes down the hall to the spare room and, slipping under the covers, she is soon fast asleep.

  thirty-seven

  Lizzy drives one car, Nell, River, and Daisy another, as they head back to the farm in silence, all of them looking out the window as they drive, each of them lost in thought.

  “This was a rough night,” Lizzy says when she finally pulls into the driveway next to Nell’s truck and steps out, the still and quiet of the night air punctuated by the car doors slamming. She hasn’t been able to stop thinking about what her mother said. It was so easy to dismiss it, but if it isn’t true, why have the words been echoing around and around all evening?