The September Sisters

by Jillian Cantor

  I told him all about Grandma Jacobson, about her sapphire hearts and her terrible cancer. We looked at pictures of my parents when they were young, when they both looked so happy and they were holding on to each other in a park and smiling. And then we looked at pictures of me and Becky—us as babies, us as toddlers, us dressed up for Christmas in these little red velvet matching dresses, us at Thanksgiving with bright orange bows in our hair.

  “She looks different than she does in the other picture.” I knew he was referring to Becky’s school picture, the one that still hung on bulletin boards and telephone poles around Pinesboro. “She looks more alive here. You can see how much energy she had. That other picture makes her look flat.”

  “Who ever looks good in their school picture?”

  He nodded. “I guess they’re just supposed to be for parents and grandparents to gush over or whatever.”

  “Not for this.”

  He looked at me, and his eyes were so expressive that I could tell there were so many things he wanted to say but didn’t know how. I could see everything he was feeling: pain for me, compassion, longing, the need to fix something that was so broken it was unfixable. “Did you ever think about its being you?”

  I’ve thought about it a million times. What if I’d been the one to disappear instead of Becky? What would’ve happened to my family then? I wonder if we would’ve broken in the same way or if somehow Becky’s spark would’ve fixed things in a way my quietness couldn’t. But I didn’t feel comfortable telling Tommy any of this, so I just shrugged and said, “Not really, no. I try not to.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. He could’ve meant right here, right in this moment, in his bedroom. But I suspected he was saying that he was glad I wasn’t the one who’d gone missing. I tried to imagine if he would’ve been friends with Becky had I been the one to disappear, and I just couldn’t see it.

  Tommy stood up and locked his bedroom door, and then he sat back down on the bed next to me and started to put the pictures back in the box. I knew as soon as I saw him lock the door that he was going to start kissing me, and I wanted him to so much.

  I don’t know why, but I started crying again. It was different now, though. It was more like relief, the sudden feeling of safety, the deep pit of missing Becky. I was crying silently, and I felt the tears running down my cheeks; I didn’t move to wipe them away. But Tommy did. He reached up and touched my face with his thumb, gently pushing away the tears. “Don’t cry, Abby,” he whispered.

  “I don’t want to.” But I couldn’t stop myself.

  “I want to kiss you,” he whispered, almost as if he were asking me a question.

  I nodded, to let him know I wanted to kiss him too. And then we were kissing and not just a quick kiss like we had those few other times. No, this was slow and long, and it lasted for probably five minutes. And it was the most amazing thing I’d ever felt.

  I felt his lips moving over mine, his tongue pushing slowly into my mouth, and it all felt perfect and warm and so nice. I knew it wasn’t the same thing, but I thought it felt the way sex was supposed to, like there was this whole new completeness that I hadn’t even known existed before that.

  When Mrs. Ramirez knocked on the door, we both jumped and as a reflex moved to opposite sides of the bed. “Dinner, kids,” she called.

  “We’ll be there in a minute,” Tommy said. I instantly thought she would know what we’d been doing. His voice had cracked, and he’d sounded as if he were choking for air. But if she knew, she didn’t let on, because I heard her turn around and walk back down the stairs.

  I was suddenly embarrassed, and I didn’t know how to look at him. He reached over and squeezed my hand. “I love you,” he whispered.

  “I love you too.”

  It was something I knew the adults around us would never understand or believe. But I believed it when he said it. I knew he meant it.

  It turns out that menudo is really cow stomach, something I didn’t know until after I had some. Then I started to feel sick, but luckily Mrs. Ramirez wasn’t offended. She was convinced that the day had taken its toll on me. “Maybe you go home and go sleep,” she said.

  But I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to face my father. For a few moments up in Tommy’s bedroom I had allowed myself this fantasy that I was loved, that life could be something amazing. I wasn’t ready to let that go.

  “It been hard year.” Mrs. Ramirez shook her head. She was talking more to herself than to either me or Tommy, so we both kept quiet. “May God pray for us.” She bowed her head and started whispering things under her breath. I looked at Tommy, but he just shrugged.

  “We’re going to go watch TV, Grandma.” She waved at us to go but didn’t miss a beat with her prayers.

  “Does she do that a lot?” I asked him, remembering the time in my living room when she tried to get me to pray for Becky.

  “Sometimes. On and off. Like she’s religious when she feels like it.”

  “Does it work then if you don’t do it all the time?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t believe it anyways.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “It’s like if praying worked, then why do bad things even happen?”

  We went back up to Tommy’s room, and I put the rest of my pictures back in the box. “You can leave these here if you want,” Tommy said. “I’ll take care of them for you.”

  “Thanks.” I knew he would.

  “I’ll keep them on the high shelf in my closet. No one looks up there. Grandma can’t even reach that high. They’ll be safe.”

  I handed him the box. “I know. I know they will be.”

  “What are you going to say to your father?”

  “Nothing. Probably we’ll forget the whole thing ever happened.”

  “You won’t forget,” he said.

  I knew he was right, but I didn’t want to admit it. I felt myself starting to hate my father and my mother as well. I knew my anger toward them was wrong, but I couldn’t help it. They both were destroying my life in their own way.

  He took the box of pictures and pushed it up onto the high shelf. “There,” he said.

  “Thanks.” And I didn’t just mean for the pictures. I meant for everything, for the kiss.

  Tommy came back and sat down next to me on the bed. “Do you know if my father hadn’t left and your sister hadn’t disappeared, we probably never would’ve met.”

  “Even if we had,” I said, “it wouldn’t have been the same.” If Becky had still been here, Tommy would’ve been my obligation, someone I was forced to be kind to because my mother made me, someone whom Jocelyn and I would’ve secretly made fun of. I felt kind of bad just thinking about it.

  “My mother always says that everything happens for a reason. It’s such a stupid thing to say, though, you know?”

  I nodded. “My grandma Jacobson used to say that all the time. I always thought it was something that old people said to make themselves feel better.”

  “Does it make you feel better to think that?”

  I shook my head. “No, not really. You?”

  “Nah. I guess not.” Tommy leaned over and hugged me, holding me so close to him that I could feel his breath against my neck. We sat there and hugged each other for a while, neither one of us saying a word. We didn’t have to.

  When I got home, my father was sitting in the living room watching TV, Tabby curled up at his feet.

  “She’s a good dog,” he said when I walked in.

  I nodded. “I know.”

  “We should’ve gotten a dog years ago.”

  I didn’t point out that Becky and I once begged him for a dog for what seemed like weeks after one of her friends from school had gotten a terrier puppy and brought it in for show-and-tell. I didn’t remind him that he had a theory about children and dogs, that the two didn’t belong together because children just weren’t responsible. Everything was different now; it was a whole new world.

  Chapter
28

  THE SECOND FALL when school began again, I was just Abigail Reed. People had other things to talk about. Katie Rainey was an instant celebrity, being that she had both successfully run away and had a boyfriend who was old enough to drive. James Harper had lost his middle toe over the summer after getting his foot caught under a lawn mower. He’d spent weeks in the hospital and lost a lot of blood, and apparently it was touch and go for a while. But he was there, on crutches (and missing a toe), for the first day of school. I was old news.

  Tommy began the year at the high school, so it was lonely at lunch. He turned fifteen two weeks before school started, and Mrs. Ramirez gave him a bike and a helmet for his birthday. He rode the bike to school most mornings, and he was supposed to walk it home with me, but often I ended up walking by myself as he sped away on the bike with two new boys he met at the high school. It was as if he’d already forgotten our summer, and I suddenly felt more angry with him than I did with my parents.

  On my fourteenth birthday my mother came over to the house for dinner. It was the first time the three of us had eaten together in months, and quite possibly the first time my parents had spoken to each other since the spring. It was my mother’s idea. She called me the week before and told me to tell my father she was coming. “Nothing fancy,” she said. “But I thought it would be nice for you, sweetie.”

  My father picked up a pizza on the way home and opened a bottle of red wine that he and my mother shared. “To Abigail.” My father lifted his glass and touched it to my mother’s. There was this awkward moment of silence where I waited for my mother to add and Becky too, but she said nothing. She smiled at me. “Happy birthday, Ab,” my father said.

  “You’re getting so old,” my mother said. “I can’t believe it. It seems like just yesterday when you were born.” She shook her head.

  I didn’t feel right celebrating my birthday. It wasn’t like the year before, when we all were just waiting for Becky to come home. This year we knew she wasn’t, so we pretended that she had never existed at all, that she wouldn’t be turning twelve the next day. I wished that we’d just ignored my birthday too, that we’d pretended it hadn’t even happened. I felt this enormous weight of guilt hanging in my chest; it was a suffocating feeling, something that made me want to gag on my pizza or to stop breathing altogether. But I ate because I didn’t want to upset either of my parents.

  I could tell my father was excited to have my mother at dinner. He kept staring at her and offering her more food and wine, which she took. I think they both got a little drunk, because by the time we’d finished dinner, my parents’ cheeks were rosy and they were laughing. When my father reached out his hand for my mother, she took it. Then she shook his hand and said, “Oh, Jim, really.” And she giggled. I felt a sudden surge of hope. Maybe my mother had gotten her depression out of her system. Maybe she would move back in. Maybe even without Becky we could be complete again, something real, a family.

  But my mother let go of my father’s hand as quickly as she’d grabbed it and started gulping her wine, and my father, looking suddenly wounded, turned away so he didn’t have to meet my eyes.

  Tommy and Mrs. Ramirez showed up at the door with fourteen pink balloons just before we were ready for cake. “Happy birthday, Ah-bee-hail.” Mrs. Ramirez kissed me on the cheek.

  “Here.” Tommy handed me the balloons. “Happy birthday.” I nodded but tried not to make eye contact with him.

  My father had invited them without telling me, which made me feel a little annoyed. Things had been so strange with Tommy and me since school started that when I saw him standing there, I felt a little sick to my stomach. I was angry with him for ignoring me.

  “Ooh. Everybody here today.” Mrs. Ramirez walked in and gave my mother a hug. “Long time no see.” My mother didn’t answer her, but she accepted the hug.

  “Where’s Tabby?” Tommy asked. He hadn’t been over since school started, and I’d been walking Tabby by myself lately, though my father thought I was still walking her with Tommy.

  “She’s in the basement.” I nodded toward the door. “Go ahead. She’ll be happy to see you.” I didn’t mean to say it accusingly to make him feel guilty or anything, but it kind of came out that way.

  “Oh, bring her upstairs,” my mother said. “I’ve been dying to meet this infamous Tabby. I can’t believe your father let you keep that dog. Really, Jim, you surprise me.”

  My father shrugged. “I’ll get the cake.”

  Tommy brought Tabby upstairs, and then we all sat at the table. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to me. It was strange; I felt like I was watching the whole thing in slow motion, like it was one big cartoon or something. It didn’t seem real that all these people were here for me and that they were singing. When the singing stopped, I blew out the candles, but I didn’t make a wish. I no longer believed in wishes.

  After we had cake, I asked Tommy if he wanted to take Tabby out for a walk, partly because being in the house with everyone there was starting to make me feel suffocated and partly because I really wanted to see him alone.

  We took Tabby around the block and walked in silence for a few minutes, but when Tabby stopped to sniff a tree, I looked Tommy square in the eye and said what I was really thinking. “Why have you been ignoring me?”

  He shoved his hands into his pocket and stomped his feet a little, as if trying to stay warm, but it was still mild outside, so I think he was really just nervous. “I haven’t,” he said. “I don’t mean to.” He took a hand out of his pocket and put it on my shoulder, a touch that suddenly felt warm and reassuring, and I didn’t pull away even though I was still annoyed with him.

  “I miss you at lunch,” I said.

  He nodded. “I miss you too.”

  “I wish I were in high school.”

  “I know.”

  “Will you wait for me after school tomorrow?”

  “Okay,” he said. “But I don’t know if I can every day. It’s just…”

  I felt bad for being so jealous that Tommy had other friends, because I felt like a terrible person for wanting him to be as lonely as I was. “Well, it’s okay if you can’t.”

  But the next day when I got out of school, he was there, waiting for me, and we walked home together.

  Chapter 29

  MAYBE IT’S THE snow that changes everything, the transformation of the world from green to white, from fresh to frozen. It was snowing again when Tommy and I went back to Morrow’s field. Our last real day together.

  We had off from school because of the snow, and Tommy knocked on my front door in the morning. “My grandmother wanted me out of the house,” he said, almost apologetically. “We could go sledding if you want.”

  I was still angry with Tommy for being older than I was, for having a life that was separate from mine. After our talk on my birthday, he waited for me some days after school. But I hadn’t seen him waiting for the past two weeks, so I was a little annoyed with him when he showed up on my porch. I still thought about that day in the summer when he told me he loved me, so deep down I wasn’t really mad at him, but I didn’t know what to expect from him anymore. “I don’t know. It’s kind of cold outside.”

  “Well, whatever. We can watch TV then.”

  I wondered what had happened to his high school friends, but I didn’t want to ask. Truthfully I was tired of being alone. “Come on in. Let me get my boots on.”

  Tommy had grown taller over the past few months, and he looked a little more muscular. He suddenly seemed more grown up, and he had these large broad shoulders. His hair was a little longer, so it looked the way it had when I first met him, but it didn’t look shaggy anymore. It was the first time I could really picture Tommy as a man, somebody’s father or husband or whatever, and the thought thrilled me a little.

  “How’s school?” I asked him while I rummaged through the closet for my boots.

  “Its okay. It’s good, I guess.”

  “Hmm.” I found my boots in the back,
right next to Becky’s, and I hesitated for a moment before pulling them out. I wondered if they would fit her now, how much her feet could’ve grown in a year and a half.

  “I got an A on my English paper last week. And I’m doing pretty good in all my classes.”

  I took my boots into the foyer and sat down to yank them on. “Well, that’s good, I guess.”

  “Yeah. I like it a whole lot better than last year.”

  “Gee, thanks a lot.”

  “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Well, I don’t know how you meant it.” I felt myself getting jealous. It was the way I’d feel when Becky would get all the attention, when I’d feel my parents loved her more than they loved me. Tommy liked high school better than he liked the time he’d spent with me last year.

  He sat down on the floor next to me. “I do miss you.”

  “Whatever.”

  “No, I mean it.”

  “It’s not a big deal.” I stood up. “Let’s go outside.”

  Out in Morrow’s field it could’ve been any other winter day in any other year. People were playing and throwing snowballs and building snowmen, and everyone was laughing. I couldn’t stop thinking about Becky. It was worse than the year before, when it was quiet, like a shrine. To me, this all felt wrong, and I thought about God striking all of us down with a big bolt of lightning or something. Everybody had already forgotten.

  “It’s too crowded here,” Tommy said, as if he could read my mind. “Let’s just take a walk instead.” I let him take my hand and lead me around the block, so we just walked together in the snow. Being out in the open like that for the first time made me feel like we were a couple, like something solid that belonged joined together.

  “I’m so sick of this place,” I said. All the houses in our neighborhood looked perfect, little icicles hanging off the undersides of the roof and all that, snow covering the front lawns.