A Gift for My Sister: A Novel

by Ann Pearlman

  Allie extols the scenery. It looks bleak to me. Southern California in the winter, without a hope for the wipe-away cleanliness of snow.

  I glance back again to make sure the U-Haul is still there.

  “Everything is safe. All your things are okay. Smoke seems like a conscientious driver,” Allie reassures me.

  I stare out the window. I don’t know how long, how many miles I just stare.

  My cell phone rings. It’s Mom asking me how I am. The worry in her voice exhausts me. She’s at the conference. She doesn’t like being away from me.

  “Allie, Rachel, and I are driving.” That’s all I say. And then Mom makes a loud kissing sound.

  Allie and Rachel invent a story. I half listen as they take turns narrating. Rachel’s characters vanish. One to Chicago. One to a hospital. Allie invents new ones.

  When my iPhone rings again, I jerk.

  “Hey, you see the signs for the amusement park?” Tara sounds enthusiastic and excited, as though we’re simply on a road trip. “It’s just ahead. We thought we’d stop. Stretch our legs. Let Levy and Rachel go on some kiddie rides. We need something to eat. Something besides my trail mix and apples. What do you think?”

  “I’m not hungry.” She’s such a child. An amusement park at a time like this.

  “Oh.” Tara’s voice deflates. “Let me speak to Allie.”

  Allie nods and then says, “Okay. I could use a break, too.”

  “I have to pee-pee,” Rachel says. “So does Maddie.”

  “Well, we’ll stop then.”

  We come to a stone wall. East is directly ahead, and sun blares through the windshield. We drive down a skimpy road. The amusement park is empty.

  We enter a different world, a perfectly groomed forest. Trees shade the ground; their branches exit trunks at exactly the same parallel distance from the earth. Nothing grows underneath them. The trees are stiff and the breeze dead as though it’s not a forest, but a stage set from Disneyland. Our shushing car wheels on the blacktop make the only sound.

  Allie pulls to a parking space, where weeds have grown through cracks in the split tar. The U-Haul and bus pull beside us and stop.

  I look around. “Everybody is gone.”

  Rachel tugs my hand. “Maybe they’re over there.” She points, and then Rachel and Levy run down the road.

  Aaron, Red Dog, and Smoke go with them. I watch as the adult figures obliterate my daughter. I shift and see her arms flap as she runs, her hair flying in the wind she makes.

  Tara looks at me and frowns. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I walk down the road, examining my toes moving in my flip-flops and listening to their slap with each step. My chipped red toenail polish seems so garish. So unkempt, as though a harbinger of the evils of sloppiness.

  We enter a clearing, a cluster of low, modern buildings in front of a lake mirroring the sky. The lake’s edges are perfectly curved and outlined in red brick; the contour forms soft bays and inlets. On the far side is a Ferris wheel, tilt-a-whirl, and carousel, all as immobile as the trees. A concession stand waits to serve hamburgers and pizza and Dairy Queen.

  The rides remain motionless, as though expecting a flip of a switch or a wind to start red, blue, and yellow spinning, whirling.

  We’re the only people.

  Taller than any of the buildings, maybe three stories high, is a metal statue of a man. One foot is planted on a pyramid that is at least five feet high. His bearded chin juts over a clenched fist; his other hand rests on his hip, fingers spread. He’s formed from metal rectangles, small ones for his fingers and chin, large ones for his chest. His expression is confident, bordering on angry, as though he’s determined to rule.

  He must be the king of angels because a circle of them, each shielding a small garden, surround him. They’re almost as tall as I am and armored with stiff wings, breasts of metal cones. Warriors? Avengers? Amazons? I envy them for their rigid autonomy. Everything soft and flexible has been hardened.

  Rachel and Levy run between the angels, looking up at their unsmiling faces, poking at them, and then skipping to the next one. Rachel comes to me. “What’s this?”

  I shake my head.

  The lake glitters silver to the sky. I examine the steel man. He’s a monument to something. Maybe the artist who made him.

  The men wander closer to the Ferris wheel. Maybe they can make it spin. A merry-go-round of tigers and elephants, alligators and zebras, and gigantic robins and dogs is off in the distance. The animals still have most of their vivid hues, but the paint is chipped in random splotches so they all appear spotted.

  I stretch out on the ground, beside the lake. The grass is brittle and sharp. I cross one ankle on a knee; one hand cradles my head, the other rests on my chest. Rachel runs back to me, lies beside me, and cuddles into me, resting her head on my shoulder.

  Rachel’s eyes close and her body molds into mine, yearning for whatever I can give.

  The sun must be over our heads now but under the clouds.

  “This is scary,” Rachel says.

  “Yes.” Tears wet my cheeks. The giant man reminds me of how far away and absolutely gone Troy is.

  A huge bird pecks at the dirt and feathers the air with long eyelashes, then steps delicately over a tuft of grass like a ballerina. It cranes its neck at us, blinks when it notices something strange in the flowerless forest. Daintily placing its feet on the earth, it undulates its long neck as it stretches past us.

  It seems as out of place here as everything else.

  “Look at the ostrich,” Tara points. “What’s it doing here?”

  We watch it tiptoe around, flexing its neck and fluttering its lashes.

  Rachel closes her eyes. The steel man watches over us. Unbelievably, she falls asleep. Just like that. Like she needed my arms to relax. We lie there while everybody else strolls around the lake. I listen to her breath.

  She jerks awake beside me and wails.

  “Honey?”

  “I had a bad dream.” She rubs her fists in her eyes. “We ate dinner. Daddy sat in his chair. He said, ‘Oooh, sweetie. I’m so proud of you.’ We ate macaroni.”

  I rub circles on her back. “That sounds happy.”

  “It isn’t true.” She screams out the word true. “Now Daddy’s gone.”

  I didn’t know how nice they were till they were gone. Simple family dinners.

  The ostrich picks its path between the stiff angels, jerking with each sound. An angel holds her palm up as if waiting for a present. The angel’s metal wings curl dangerously.

  “Was I bad, Mommy?”

  She asks the question I ask myself. After our baby was born dead, Troy brought me ice, fed me slivers of it. Smoothed my brow. Cried with me. When he left, and then Mom, I lay in the room by myself. I heard babies crying in the rooms next to me. Saw them in their cribs as they were pushed to their moms’ rooms. My breasts hurt. I’ll give anything, do anything to have a healthy baby. That’s all I want. A healthy baby. I’ll give up everything else. Just give me this. I squeezed out tears and begged. Prayed.

  The sound of all those babies’ voices made me remember Tara screaming bloody murder in her crib. She was angrier and more desperate than the infants being wheeled as fast as can be to their moms. The year before, when I was in third grade, the girls in my class voted my mom the prettiest mother.

  And then came Tara. As I lay sore from an episiotomy without a baby to ease the pain, my eyelids swollen from tears, one night came back to me. I came home from school just before Mom arrived with Tara, about two months old. Back then, Mom was manager of a RadioShack store. She gave me a one-armed hug, unbuttoned her blouse, opened the flap on her bra, and began feeding Tara.

  I looked away. Mom’s face was puffy, her arms thick and flabby, and she still had a pouch where Tara had been. No one would vote her the prettiest mom anymore. She smiled at me. “Tell me about your day, sweetie.”

  Turning away, I grabbed a can of soda and popped the lid.
<
br />   “How was school?”

  I drank the soda.

  “Would you get me a can, too?”

  I handed her a cold can, and she shrugged. She couldn’t open it because she was holding Tara. I opened it for her. And then sat down, shifting my chair so I couldn’t witness Tara’s hungry mouth gobbling her up, her little fingers splayed out on Mom’s chest. Mom smiled and tilted her head back. “Aaaah.” Her voice was relaxed and at peace, as though she’d been waiting for this union.

  In the old days, we’d snuggle on the couch after school and talk. Or play a game.

  “Do you have any homework?”

  She asked me habitual questions and I answered them mechanically. Yes. No. Whatever. Some math, but I’ll do it after dinner.

  “You need me to quiz you on your spelling words? Don’t you have a test tomorrow?”

  “Sure.”

  We made dinner while Tara rocked in a swing, watching us with a finger in her mouth until she dozed off.

  I set the table. Mom looked at her watch. “Wonder where he is. He knows I have to go back to work to close up.”

  I knew already. Kids haven’t learned to hide unpleasant truths from themselves. Stephen never did what he was supposed to other than his job. And that seemed to be mostly conning people into buying stuff they probably didn’t really need. Even as a child I saw that.

  She called Stephen’s pager, but no answer. She called his work, but no answer. So this night, this night I’m remembering while I’m lying alone in a maternity ward with a dead baby taken away, Mom had to leave me at home.

  “I’m going to have to go. Stephen should be home at any minute.”

  I rolled my eyes, and she pretended she didn’t notice.

  She asked, “You know how to warm the milk up right? There’s a bottle all ready in the fridge.” She opened the door and showed me four Playtex bottles.

  “You’ll be okay, won’t you?” There were dark blue circles under her eyes. I noticed the dark roots where her streaked hair had grown out.

  “Sure.”

  “I’m right around the corner. You know the number, right?”

  I nodded.

  She grabbed a tube of lipstick and smeared it on without a mirror. “Is it okay?”

  “Yep,” I lied. It was above one lip slightly, so she appeared lopsided.

  “You’ll be okay, I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  “Yep,” I lied again.

  “If you need me, call.”

  So she left.

  Tara slept, her head falling to her shoulder like her neck was broken. Her index finger was wet from her mouth. I brought my face close to hers looking for Mom, but I just saw Stephen in her brows, her defined cupid’s bow, and her widow’s peak. A heart-shaped face, they call it.

  I turned the TV on to watch The Cosby Show and wrapped myself up in an afghan that Mom knitted, the one we used to snuggle with, and curled it around my knees and sucked on some hard candy.

  And then, just near the end of the show, Tara started screaming. She didn’t wake up gently, but furiously.

  Maybe she had a bad dream.

  Anyway, I grabbed the bottle and ran it under hot water.

  Her shrieks intensified.

  The water wasn’t warm yet.

  I touched the bag of milk hanging inside the plastic bottle, held there by the nipple, but it was still cold.

  Tara hardly gave herself time for air, she was so angry. Not soft and loving like she was with Mom.

  And then the water became hot, and sure enough the bag was warm. I tested it the way Mom showed me on my wrist and it didn’t feel cold or hot, so I guessed it was okay. I unbuckled the strap around Tara, her little arms hitting my face.

  “Stop that.”

  But she just kept bawling as I pulled her from her swing and settled her on my lap.

  I put the nipple in her mouth, but she was so busy howling she didn’t even know I was giving her what she wanted.

  I guess that’s still true of her. She doesn’t yet realize she’s getting what she wants—she’s too busy looking to make sure it’s there.

  I squirted milk in, our mother’s milk, and she felt it, and clamped her lips around the nipple.

  Quiet. After awhile she made a little humming noise in between sucks.

  The Cosby Show was over. I’d missed Dr. Huxtable’s lesson.

  I looked down at Tara, her eyes closed again, her sucking slowed. Her arm was now flung away from herself. She wore a soft pink-and-white fleece one-piece. She nestled close to me and it felt good. Yes. For that one second, I didn’t mind the awfulness of feeding my half sister my mother’s milk.

  Then the door slammed. Stephen was home. Tara started howling again.

  “What are you doing to her?” he demanded, his thick eyebrows twitching.

  “Nothing. I was just feeding her.”

  He grabbed her from me.

  “Well, do it right,” he ordered. He looked in her face, snatched the bottle from me and stuck it in her mouth. “Stop it, baby,” he demanded.

  She started nursing and he said, “Okay, then.”

  He smelled funny. I didn’t know the smell. I’d never smelled it before, I don’t think.

  And he handed Tara to me and left.

  I put Tara in her crib.

  And went in my room, to read The Babysitter Club. I read how Kristie eventually accepted her mom’s second husband, but I knew that wouldn’t happen with Stephen. I had tried, but he bossed me around. “Don’t put your feet on the sofa.” “I can hear that Walkman from here. You’ll be deaf by the time you’re thirty.” “My God, Marnie, are you letting her out like that? In that skimpy T-shirt and shorts?”

  Was there anything good about him? He was good-looking. He read a lot and had a lot of knowledge but thought he knew everything. He taught me chess and proceeded to beat the pants off me every game. “Not going to let you win. That doesn’t teach you anything,” he said and raised one dark eyebrow. Even the good things about him had a bad side.

  I was falling asleep, and Stephen was in the shower, when Mom got home and ran up the stairs. “I know where you were!” she yelled. “You can’t do it. I’ll still smell her on you.”

  Their bedroom door slammed.

  “You aren’t you anymore,” he told Mom, his voice loud, but even.

  A few minutes later, the front door slammed and I could hear Mom sobbing.

  Yes, I thought. Get rid of him. Let’s go back to how it was. Back in the days when Mom hugged me as soon as she saw me, kneeled down and picked me up and swung me in a circle. How’s my beautiful Sky? How’s the sweetest little girl? She tickled my tummy until we both laughed tears. When one of my drawings was posted on the school’s bulletin board, we celebrated by walking to the Dairy Queen for sundaes.

  I hear her tiptoe into my room and feel her look at me. I pretend to be asleep. Maybe she’ll kiss me. Maybe she’ll snuggle with me.

  But then, Tara woke screaming, and I knew it would never be like it was.

  My life was over.

  This was what I thought about the night my baby was born dead.

  Then Troy returned with a huge bouquet of tulips and daffodils, Joy perfume, and Cherry Garcia ice cream.

  “We’ll just keep doing this, Sky. We’ll play the statistics and eventually we’ll hit the wonderful fifty percent.” He kissed my forehead and placed his head on my pillow.

  I may have thought my life was over, but then I found it again in Troy.

  “I promise. We’ll have our baby,” he said. And we did. Rachel.

  He was so good to me.

  This was what I thought about in a dead amusement park, lying under a tree with mean angels surrounding me.

  I know it will never be like it was and I feel sorry for the little girl Sky. And I feel sorry for the adult Sky. And I feel sorry for Rachel. It will never be like it was.

  “Was I bad, Mommy?” Rachel asks again, bringing me back.

  “No, sweetie,” I mus
ter.

  “Did Dad do something?” Rachel continues, insisting on a reason.

  What did we do? Come to California. Know Mia. Want a baby. Play basketball. Get a sore throat. That’s all, I think to myself. I loved him. I dared to love him and he died. “Your father was a good man. Illnesses aren’t punishments. Some things happen without a reason.” But I’m not sure I believe that. “Or we don’t know the reason.”

  She shakes her head as though it’s useless. Such an adult gesture for such a small child.

  The ostrich flicks a foot at me and a butterfly lands on his head.

  Then Allie and Tara and the rap crew return. “None of the rides work. There’re no open bathrooms there, either. We went in the bushes.”

  “No food. No bathrooms. No rides.”

  “Hey. This place is a trip. It’s crazy. Like an abandoned Hollywood set,” Aaron laughs. He always looks at the bright side.

  “That’s what it is. Somebody else’s dream gone mad.”

  They laugh, slap each other’s hands, and bounce with energy. “We’re wandering around in someone else’s dream. I wonder who he is,” Aaron says.

  “I’ll bet you’ll write a song about it,” Tara says.

  We get back in the car and I say to Allie, “That place is as crazy as I feel.” It’s probably the most lucid statement I’ve made in over a week.

  “You’re struggling to make sense out of what’s happened.” Allie turns the key in the ignition and the car hums. “I remember when my dad died. He was forty-four and I was nineteen when he dropped dead of a heart attack. For six months after that, I wandered around saying ‘Life is meaningless.’” She shakes her head. “I couldn’t figure out why he died right in the middle. I couldn’t conceive of someone not being able to finish his own story, his own life.”

  “I didn’t know your dad died young, too.”

  Both of her hands are on the wheel and she turns her head to back out of the parking space. Her features are very relaxed; she’s not smiling, or frowning.