The September Sisters

by Jillian Cantor

  I felt like a terrible person, but as I lay there awake in bed, I almost felt hopeful. If that really was Becky, we would know what happened to her. The police would find her killer and bring him or her to justice. We could have a funeral, and people would send condolences, and we would find a way to piece life back together into something whole, even if it was different from before.

  It began to dawn on me that dead was better than missing, vanished, disappeared. At least dead was final. I started thinking that if only we could have a funeral, everything would be okay.

  The only funeral I’d ever been to was Grandma Jacobson’s. We’d gone to Pittsburgh for it, so we could bury her in a plot right next to Grandpa Jacobson. She died in the spring, so it was this beautiful, warm March day. For some reason I’d expected it to be just the four of us, but my grandmother had had a lot of friends. There must’ve been a hundred people there as we buried her, and afterward they came back to Grandma Jacobson’s house, where my mother catered a lunch.

  I remember hearing a lot of stories that I never knew about my grandmother. People were laughing and recounting wonderful memories, trips they’d taken with her, and times they’d spent with her. Becky and I sat on the couch in my grandmother’s living room and listened to all these little old people tell us how wonderful she was. Her house didn’t smell like her anymore—like cinnamon and sickness. It smelled clean, like Lysol, and something altogether new that I didn’t recognize.

  It was strange, but I hadn’t been as sad as I’d expected to be. We’d known for a few months she was dying, and that whole time I felt the sadness like a weight in my chest, pulling something out of me that I didn’t even know I had. But after she died, I felt better. My mother had said to me and Becky that we should be happy that she wasn’t suffering anymore. That now she could be free of the cancer, that she could find Grandpa Jacobson again, and the two of them could be happy. I didn’t necessarily believe any of that, but still, I’d felt this startling sense of relief that came completely to the surface at the funeral when I watched them lower her casket into ground.

  My mother cried, and so did Becky. Becky clung to my mother’s dress. I’m not sure if she was old enough even to understand what was going on, but I think the mere fact that my mother was crying frightened her. This was the first time we’d ever seen my mother cry.

  I didn’t cry, though. I held on to my father’s hand, and I kept thinking, This is it. This is it! When her coffin was in the ground and people threw handfuls of dirt over the top, I knew she was gone. She was completely gone. It’s not that I didn’t miss her, that I didn’t long for her after that, but at that moment I had this feeling of completeness, finality, the end of something. My grandmother was gone.

  I thought that if we could have a funeral for Becky, then at least we would know where she was. We would be sad, and life would never be the same, but we could move on. At least I could feel something again; at least I could sleep at night; at least we could go visit her grave and talk to her. At least it would start to be over.

  We didn’t hear anything from Kinney for three days, and each day ticked by like an interminable moment. It felt like time had stopped, that it was holding us there, cruelly, while we waited. Most of those three days are a blur, and I can only truly remember this dull feeling of hope mixed with dread. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever felt, and it made my heart beat constantly faster and faster, my breath shorten, as if I’d been running. I’d have to stop to catch my breath, even if I’d just been sitting down.

  Tommy knew about the body, though he didn’t say anything about it. I could see it in his oddly exposed eyes, some sort of new pity for me, the way he stared at me just a little too long as I ate my lunch, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t.

  “What?” I asked him, almost egging him on, almost wanting to pick a fight with him. But he looked away.

  The body was a little girl a whole year younger than Becky. Her name was Anabella Girardi. Another missing girl, someone from the city.

  Kinney didn’t even come in person to tell us the news. “Don’t be sorry,” I heard my father say into the phone. “It’s not her,” he mouthed to my mother and me.

  “Oh, I knew it,” my mother said. “She’s still alive.” She smiled at me and rubbed my shoulder. I wasn’t sure if I believed she was still alive or not. But I didn’t feel relieved like my parents, didn’t feel the slightest bit of hope.

  I saw her school picture on the news, and there she was, in a pose similar to Becky’s, with similar blond hair and a cute, toothy smile—frozen forever at nine.

  We watched them interview the mother on the news as she stood outside their broken-down row house in West Philadelphia and cried. She was a small, skinny woman, with greasy, stringy hair, and she was missing a few teeth. “She was my baby,” she said, sobbing. “My baby.”

  “Oh,” my mother said, and she covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh.”

  It was a place you’d expect a girl to go missing from. Nothing like Pinesboro. Nothing like my perfect neighborhood, with its sprawling green yards and picket fences.

  A few weeks later the police caught her killer, her own father, who’d been recently estranged from the family. Case closed. End of story.

  Some nights I’d dream about Anabella Girardi. I’d see her swimming in the river, then sinking, slowly. I’d try to reach out for her, and when I did, her face transformed, a little like melting plastic, until it was Becky I was looking at, Becky drowning.

  Chapter 21

  THE NEWS OF the body not belonging to Becky catapulted my mother out of bed and back into the real world. She began walking over to the school to walk me home, and she did something that she hadn’t really done since Becky had disappeared: She started cooking dinner.

  I enjoyed those walks home with my mother. If she had dared pick me up from school the year before, I would’ve ignored her or pretended not to see her, and I would’ve kept right on walking with Jocelyn until she called out my name so embarrassingly loudly that I was forced to stop.

  But I was so desperate for my mother to recognize me, to remember me, that I was glad when she came to walk me home. I was surprised she kept coming, even when it got cold again. She’d bundle herself all up and be waiting for me out in front of the school steps with a scarf wrapped around most of her face and her baby blue hat covering her ears.

  “You don’t have to come when it’s this cold,” I told her.

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “I kind of like it. It’s refreshing.”

  Mostly we walked home in silence. I’d watch our feet and try to match my mother’s steps, her strides, so we were walking in tandem. Sometimes she asked me about my day, and I’d always tell her it was fine, even if it wasn’t. I walked home delicately, on thin ice. I knew it was only a matter of time before she’d break.

  At home I watched my mother begin to act like my father’s wife again. It was little things that I noticed: She’d straighten his tie before we left in the morning; she’d take his jacket and get him a beer when he walked in; she’d smile at him across the table. I began to love my mother all over again for these simple things she did for my father, the ways she had started to reinvent us as a family.

  One afternoon near the end of January Tommy walked home with us. Mrs. Ramirez had some kind of appointment and wasn’t able to pick him up, and apparently she’d asked my mother to make sure he got home all right.

  It was a little strange walking with both of them. I didn’t want to walk too close to Tommy for fear my mother would notice I felt something for him, but I didn’t want to walk too close to my mother either. I didn’t want Tommy to think I had thrown him away now that my mother was acting normal again.

  I ended up walking a little behind the two of them as my mother asked Tommy a million questions. She was putting on a show for him, I knew, because she talked more to him than she ever did to me.

  “Well, we just love your new haircut, don’t we, Abby?”


  “Yeah,” I said, but she wasn’t really paying attention to me anyway.

  She touched the top of his head with her hand. “Oh, it’s so stubbly. You must be freezing. Didn’t your grandmother give you a hat?”

  “Naw. I’m not cold,” Tommy said.

  I rolled my eyes, even though neither one of them could see me. I was sure Tommy was freezing and that he’d stuffed the green and white Eagles hat that Mrs. Ramirez had bought him for Christmas into his backpack.

  “Oh,” my mother said, “boys will be boys, I guess. Girls like their hats. We accessorize, right, Ab?” She laughed.

  I could tell Tommy was uncomfortable because he moved his head like he used to when he flipped his hair. It looked funny now, more like a nervous twitch, since the hair was gone.

  I felt slightly jealous. It was a strange feeling, something that had become unfamiliar to me these past few months. I knew it was silly, that my mother was just pretending with Tommy, not offering any of the real affection that I so desperately wanted from her, but still, I couldn’t help myself.

  “Did you have a nice trip to Florida?”

  “Yeah, it was okay,” Tommy said.

  “Just okay? Oh, my, what I wouldn’t do for sunshine like that.” She laughed again, and Tommy did his nervous head shake.

  “Remember when we went to Disney?” I said.

  “Oh, Abby, that was ages ago. Another lifetime.” This time the laugh caught in her throat, and it sounded more like a cough. I knew instantly that I’d said the wrong thing, that my mother was suddenly picturing Becky waving as she flew by on the Dumbo ride. She loved that stupid ride. I had to go on it with her five times, just flying sort of aimlessly in a circle, in this big plastic elephant. Personally, I’d thought it was ridiculous.

  No one said anything for a few minutes until we crossed the street to enter our development. Finally my mother said, “You’re a nice boy, Tommy, aren’t you?” He shrugged. “Your grandmother tells me how sweet you are. That’s good. You know, I was so glad when I had girls. I couldn’t imagine raising a boy. They’re so…I don’t know, harsh, I guess.”

  Tommy didn’t say anything, but I didn’t know what he could say in response to that. She was starting to make me nervous; she sounded a little crazy. I wanted to shake her, to ask her to act like a normal person and not embarrass me in front of Tommy. But I kept my mouth shut.

  “Tommy sounds so much like a kid,” she said. “You should go by Thomas, with this new haircut and everything.”

  “He likes to be called LT,” I said. Tommy turned around and glared at me. I’m not sure what made me say it, but as soon as it popped out of my mouth, I knew I’d revealed something sacred, something that would make Tommy hate me, and I was instantly sorry.

  “LT. Oh, no,” my mother said. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t suit you at all.”

  “Whatever,” Tommy said. “I don’t care.”

  “Thomas,” my mother said. “We’ll call you Thomas from now on, won’t we, Ab?”

  “Sure, I guess so.” I was reluctant to disagree with my mother, afraid of what that might do to her, even though I knew I was probably hurting Tommy’s feelings.

  Tommy turned around and gave me this look I’d never quite seen from him before, something that said he despised me, that whatever he might have felt for me, it was gone.

  For nearly three months I let myself believe that my phone call to Garret had worked, that his relationship with my mother, whatever it was, was over. But this little illusion came crashing down one night in February when I heard my parents fighting about him.

  They thought I was in my room doing my homework, and I was, but my father’s booming voice startled me, and I went to the top of the stairs to hear what they were saying.

  “It’s not like that,” my mother said. “We just talk.”

  “You can talk to me.”

  “Jim, don’t.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Elaine, why don’t you just talk to me?”

  “It’s not the same thing, Jim. Garret understands me.”

  “Goddammit, so do I.”

  When I heard Garret’s name, I felt sick; I had this instant unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach, like this was about to be the end of something else, the creation of an even larger gap in my family. Then I felt angry with myself because I’d allowed myself to be fooled by my mother’s acting normal.

  “Well, you don’t give me a chance,” my father said. “You cringe when I touch you. Jesus.”

  “Hush. Keep your voice down.”

  “I’m trying to understand. God knows I am, Elaine, but you’re making me look like a goddamn fool.”

  “No. Nobody thinks that. I don’t think that.”

  “Jesus, I miss her too. Don’t you think I’m hurting?”

  “It’s not the same for you,” my mother said. “Everything cuts me.” It sounded so strange, but when my mother said that, I knew it was perfectly accurate.

  “I don’t want you to see him anymore,” my father said.

  “We just have coffee. And we talk. That’s it, Jim. Nothing else.”

  “You see him more than you see me.” I was surprised by the whininess of my father’s tone. It didn’t suit him, and I wondered if I sounded that awfully desperate when I whined to get my way.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Rosalie told me. Every day he comes here to pick you up.” I felt sorry for my mother that Mrs. Ramirez had ratted her out, and also slightly annoyed. I hated it when Becky told on me.

  “So what? So it helps me get through the day.”

  “Well, it stops today,” my father said. “You’re not seeing him anymore.”

  “Jim—”

  “No, I mean it. Talk to me, or talk when you see that damn therapist I’m paying a hundred dollars an hour. That’s what he’s there for.”

  I wondered exactly who Garret was and how he and my mother had met. I’d always imagined an affair to be something sexual, something awfully torrid and steamy. It was how I pictured Mr. Peterson’s affair. The thought of it was just enough to make me blush when I’d seen him getting his mail the other day. He’d been wearing a black suit, much like one my father would wear, but on him it looked distinguished, handsome even, and I caught myself wondering what exactly he might be doing when he cheated on Mrs. Peterson.

  If my mother was telling the truth, her relationship with Garret had nothing to do with sex, but I still felt this gnawing in my gut that she was doing something wrong, that she was cheating on my father in another, altogether different way. Wasn’t my father the one who was supposed to make her laugh, make her feel better?

  My parents had always told us that a marriage was a partnership, something with two equal halves, where you shared everything—responsibilities, joys, sadnesses. If that was the case, then I didn’t think my mother was still considering my father her partner.

  I wondered if Garret and my mother had kissed. In my gut I believed they had. I couldn’t imagine sharing all that talking, all that understanding, and being able to resist the feeling of warmth that would inevitably follow. When Tommy and I shared two brief moments of complete understanding, they both resulted in small instants of passion. I suspected it was the same for my mother.

  The next day my mother wasn’t waiting for me outside school, and I had to ride home with Tommy and Mrs. Ramirez. “You mother not feeling so hot,” Mrs. Ramirez said. “Get in. I watch you today.”

  “You shouldn’t have told on her,” I whispered.

  Mrs. Ramirez cocked her head and gave me this funny, twisted look. I couldn’t tell if she’d heard me at first, but then she said, “Ah-bee-hail, you too young to understand.”

  I hate when adults tell me I’m too young to understand something, because I always feel like it’s their excuse to keep from explaining themselves. I knew in my heart that what Mrs. Ramirez had done was wrong.

  Once we got back to Mrs. Ramirez’s house, I tried to get Tommy to play Uno with
me. Since the walk home with my mother two weeks earlier, we’d barely spoken at lunch, and this was the first day we’d been required to spend after school together in a while. I was hoping Tommy wouldn’t hold a grudge.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m kind of sick of that game.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” The game had begun to get old, but it was the habit of it, the ritual that I liked. I enjoyed having something that felt like mine and Tommy’s, something that belonged to us.

  “Anyway, I have a lot of homework.”

  I thought that he was just saying that to avoid me, and I felt disappointed. “Don’t be mad at me,” I said. I didn’t think I could take it if he hated me.

  He shook his head. “I’m not.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded, but I could tell something was different. We had lost our closeness, an understanding of each other. I knew that the day I’d betrayed Tommy’s confidence in front of my mother was not something he would easily forget.

  “Your grandmother told on my mother, about her seeing Garret every day,” I said.

  “I know. I was here when she told your father.” I felt a little angry that he hadn’t told me about it before I brought it up. “She made me promise not to tell you.”

  “I understand,” I said, but I didn’t, not really.

  I started to see the way loyalty worked, and it was odd the way you could feel a certain sense of loyalty to some people that interfered with your loyalty to others. It was the way I’d felt when Tommy walked home with me and my mother, that I needed to be on her side, even though a part of me had wanted to be on his. I guessed that Tommy felt the same about his grandmother. She’d saved him in a certain way, taken him out of Florida when his life had been bad, and I supposed he felt he owed her something for that.

  “Are they having an affair?” Tommy asked.

  “No, I don’t think so. She told my father they just drink coffee and talk.”