A Gift for My Sister: A Novel

by Ann Pearlman

  “Not as young as yours. Or Rachel’s. People survive these sudden losses. When you hear their stories, you’re amazed at their resilience and fighting spirit.”

  “You think Mom’s recovered?”

  Now we’re behind the U-Haul and bus. I like it better that way. I can see them.

  Allie watches the road. She presses her lips together, considering what to say. “What do you think?”

  “Oh. One of those therapist answers.”

  She laughs, but waits for my reply.

  “Mom doesn’t cry about Dad anymore. But . . . I don’t know. I don’t think Stephen helped. Mom accidentally landed herself in a hurricane.” It’s peculiar trying to see it from Mom’s viewpoint instead of mine.

  We’re both quiet as we watch the landscape.

  Then Allie continues, “A lot of people are like that. They can’t bear to be alone and think someone else will make the pain go away.”

  Mom and I shared our lives then and now. Unbelievably, way beyond the statistical probability, we’re faced with the same tragedy as adults. Over and over. In a bunch of different configurations, the same rare, random, awful event.

  I watch the U-Haul shift and sway. The three vehicles in our little caravan. And then we start seeing signs for the south rim of the Grand Canyon. White cattle wander on the plains under folded mountains.

  A while after that, I don’t know how long, Allie says, “But your mom is alright. More than alright. And I think she’s finally found her man in Jim.”

  “It’s taken her almost twenty years.”

  “It doesn’t have to take that long, but mourning a major death takes an average of twenty-seven years. Imagine that. Luckily, you get to live your life while you’re doing it.”

  I’m not talking anymore, just watching the red earth and the crumbled dusty trees. I don’t know where she gets all these statistics. Psychology Today, maybe. Someone told me that forty-three percent of statistics are lies. I guess that’s a joke. But maybe not.

  “But we have to mourn.” Allie says.

  Now, I want her to stop talking, so I don’t answer.

  CHAPTER SIX

  All Through the Night

  Tara

  I TUCK LEVY into bed that night, just as I always do. I read “Hiawatha” and sing “All Through the Night,” except I make up the words.

  And then he starts his little song. We sing the notes together. It isn’t the same one that I sang, that I didn’t even know I sang until Mom told me the other day. It isn’t ah oh ah oh. It’s la de la de. So he starts his comfort music and I sing with him. Together we chant la de la de and, just before he nods off, I place him in his bed and gently kiss him on his forehead so his silky curls tickle my cheek. I stand beside him, my hand on his back; his chest radiates the warmth of him while his voice dims, my voice whispering until we both stop.

  I don’t tell Mom any of this. None of us can help who we are, and maybe it’s enough that she noticed and remembered. Levy and I both find solace in our love of music. Mom had that easy connection with Sky. So much depends on the luck of how the genes sort out. And what happens to your parents along the way. I mean, it’s not about you. You don’t make your childhood.

  I learned life is full of all kinds of surprises from Sky, from the sudden switch in all our lives when Troy died. I don’t totally believe he’s gone, and want to call him like I did sometimes when he was at work because it was always easier to talk to him than Sky. In fact, he made my relationship with Sky smoother. But now I wonder what will happen between us. She attacked me in her condo when I was helping her. I swallowed my pride though, bowing to her circumstances. Was she angry that I was, for once, in a position to help her? I can’t tell if her mourning has crossed over into self-pity.

  No good deed goes unpunished, I think, listening to Levy’s breathing rhythm.

  That night, Aaron enters me and together we are sweet and slow. From the beginning, there’s an extra intensity created by the threat of King, and by Aaron’s flirtation. We stare into each other’s eyes the entire time, watching fleeting expressions flash across our faces. The light is dim, so I only see the gleam from his eyes as they shine at me, and the triangle of his nose. We surge together until I get the sense that we can move forever, that once again we’ve tapped into the stirring of the universe.

  He says, before we finish, “I always thought sex was just sex. But it’s . . . I don’t know the word . . . spiritual, mystical. As though we’re meditating together.”

  “You said what I feel,” I tell him.

  “We’re so right for each other, it’s spooky,” he whispers, his voice rumbling under my cheek.

  My head nestles on his shoulder, his arm is around me, and then he falls asleep. He looks so handsome, his face open to his dreams. Nothing this good lasts, but I’ve thought that before and it keeps getting better.

  Just before I fall asleep I think, when will I fuck it up? That thought is in my father’s voice. I know just how to do it. How to play the games, how to destroy my own world and walk away to another one, completely indifferent to the devastation I leave in my wake. I’m hit with a crisp sense of my father’s fear of entanglements, his strong desire to be alone. Maybe that’s what has made me hold myself back. I tell myself I’ve been the jerk. Better that than the jerkee. Then, King’s face with a slight condescending smile shows me the way to be like my father. I don’t want to be my mother, so maybe being like him is the better option.

  I understand what goes on inside me, and I accept it. But that doesn’t seem to make a difference.

  The next morning, we’re at the Grand Canyon. The crew is up and dressed. Levy is still in his PJs, and I watch as he pulls on some jeans and struggles with the button. “Good job,” I tell him. I think it’s the first time he’s buttoned his jeans. “You’re getting so grown up.” He grins at me, and then strolls away. Part of me wants him to stay a little baby. Aaron combs Levy’s hair while I get dressed, and then we’re ready to go.

  None of us has ever seen the Grand Canyon, except for Allie.

  “It’s the number one wonder of the world,” Red said, looking at a map and realizing how close it is to Vegas.

  Yesterday, we drove through red earth split with startling peaks. Sometimes the earth had caved away, as though the ground couldn’t seal up a wound, and a gulch formed. Red mesas, hills with their tops cut off, looked like tables decorating the flat landscape. Not much green. Only red and pink and purple, and a sky overturned on the earth shedding clouds and rain. In the distance, bolts of lightning zigzagged from within black clouds, exhausting themselves, then flashing again with new claws.

  Levy pointed at the lightning, but it had vanished. And then he noticed that out the other window, the sky was absolutely blue. The sun sent a shaft of light to the red earth. A thunderstorm and a sunbeam simultaneously.

  The heavens can hold so much. Even T-Bone, usually so disinterested, shook his head and simply said, “Wow. A schizophrenic sky,” with awe in his voice. We sat in our seats and watched the rain sheet down one side of the bus while a merry sun floated among the few fluffy clouds on the other.

  “I didn’t know this was possible,” Red Dog said.

  “As astounding as music,” I whispered to Aaron.

  “I know.” He squeezed my thigh. “Amazing.”

  So it’s a sunny morning and not too hot when we all meet above Ooh Aah Point.

  And there it is: a red and beige striped wonder. Peaks stick out all over the canyon sides. Across the way there are crenulated rocks banded with color. The color ignores the juts and recesses in the cliff. I should learn to knit and make a poncho with those colors. Mom would love it; Aaron would hate the poncho. I sit on a rock, Levy beside me, Aaron on the other side of him. We each hold a hand as we consume the view.

  “Hey, let’s go down?” T-Bone asks.

  I know going down is easier than coming up, especially with Levy. We’d all have to take turns carrying him. I glance down the path
and it looks narrow, with a dropoff cliff on the other side, so I think he and I should wait. But the crew can’t contain their eagerness and start down the canyon. “Don’t forget you, like, have to come back up,” I call.

  Aaron laughs, “You don’t think we can make it? Anyway, we’re not going all the way down.”

  I guess I’d like to go, but I stay with Levy and wait for my sister and Rachel and Allie. Levy and I walk along the path that edges the canyon. The color bands meander over the cruel rock.

  “Who made this, Mama?” Levy asks.

  I take him as close to the edge as is safe and point to the river snaking at the bottom. “It’s not a who, it’s a what. That river carved this. It used to be up here, where we are, but it dug out the rock deeper and deeper till it got there.” I point to the bottom.

  He looks over the lip, me fastened to him by our hands, and then frowns at me as if I’m making up a story. “For real?”

  The Colorado looks like a stream, like our little Huron from up here, and nowhere near powerful enough to cut rock. Sometimes truth is less believable than fiction.

  “The rocks are kind of soft,” I try to explain. “And we’re so far away it looks smaller.”

  The two of us sit filled with wonder.

  He picks up a rock. “Look. It has dots on it.” He hands it to me.

  The rock is shaped like an egg, gray with white speckles. I hand it back to him. He’s making a collection of rocks. The heart-shaped one, a rough green one that somehow became smooth on one side that he picked up near the metal man. Now this one.

  “You’re getting souvenirs from our trip.”

  “What’s ’venires?”

  “Things that help you remember, that are part of the place,” I tell him.

  And then Rachel, Sky, and Allie arrive. I see Rachel first. She’s wearing a blue L.A. baseball cap and mini sunglasses. It’s the first time since Troy’s death that Sky has taken any care in dressing her and she looks cute. Then I realize, Allie probably dressed her. Rachel runs to us and takes her glasses off as though the colors with the other-world-view are in them. Her eyes widen as she sees the canyon, the random straight-up mountains in the middle and the drop to the bottom of the earth.

  Sky wanders on the path next to the edge watching her feet, not even paying attention to the view or us. She doesn’t even say hello. I go up to her and give her a hug. “How you doing today?” I make my voice soft, trying to be extra loving.

  She should realize we’re all here helping her, but she seems to listen to private voices, to watch the world through half-shut, narrowed eyes. She doesn’t answer. Troy’s death wasn’t that long ago.

  “Did you sleep last night?”

  “Until 3:42. Like always.” She shrugs and keeps walking.

  Rachel and Levy are with Allie, who knows this path. We can all go down a little bit until it gets too narrow for the kids, so we start into the canyon. I see Special and the crew below on the switchback trails. They’re bouncing down the trail, water bottles in their hands or jammed in a sagging pants pocket, half skipping, excited by the beauty around them. They’ve totally lost their urban cool as they run down the canyon like boys again, Aaron running free in all this glory.

  It’s early, and not tourist season, so we’re the only people here. Down at the bottom, there are some mules. Other than that, we have the Grand Canyon to ourselves.

  We pick our way down. I hold Levy’s hand, and Allie holds Rachel’s. We get deep enough that we have the sense of being IN it, part of it. The rim, and our usual earth, is far enough above that our existence is only the chasm. All we can see are rocks that look soft, almost washed with color, but are really sharp, jagged, and cruel.

  Allie looks around and says, “It always takes my breath away, it’s always new. I look at the pictures I take and they don’t capture it. They’re only a little slice.” She hangs on to Rachel’s hand, turning her head slowly to view the totality.

  “I want to go home,” Rachel says and starts crying. “I want Daddy.”

  Levy shakes his head and goes close to her. “I don’t think he’s there anymore.” He doesn’t say it meanly, but like it’s a fact that he figured out.

  Allie hugs her.

  Sky walks ahead of us, examining her shoes again. The rest of us hug Rachel.

  “I know what. Let’s all imagine your daddy and send him images of this beautiful place and feel how happy he’d be that we’re all here together enjoying it,” Allie says.

  “Mooooommmmmmyyyyy,” Rachel calls.

  Sky turns and walks toward us, her hands limp at her sides, and Rachel pulls her into our small huddle on the edge of a cliff. We hold hands. I think how spectacular that this exists. How lucky we are to live on this planet in spite of the tragedy of Troy’s death. When we drop hands I say, “Rachel and Levy, you both are such miracles. All of us. And this place.” Then I realize how sentimental and schmaltzy I’m being, overwhelmed and blown away by the splendor and the tumult of the last few weeks. As though the Grand Canyon is a refuge.

  Sky doesn’t say anything. She simply turns and shuffles down the path, examining pebbles on the trail.

  CHAPTER SIX

  All through the Night

  Sky

  I DON’T GET the big deal about the Grand Canyon. It’s a big hole in the ground. Just something a river carved out eons ago. No more spectacular than mountains or clouds that we take for granted. It doesn’t change how I feel. It doesn’t take me out of myself. If Troy were here, he’d want us to walk to the bottom and ride the mules back up. Once long ago in another life, that would have been fun.

  So after the Grand Canyon, we hit I-40 again, 280 miles to Albuquerque. There are signs about Route 66 all along the way as we drive through dusty earth past Flagstaff to Winslow and go to the motel pool. Well, Tara and the rap dudes take a helicopter ride over the canyon. Allie and Levy and Rachel and I are at the motel.

  Troy has been dead almost a month. It’ll be a month the day after tomorrow. A month. It seems like just yesterday. It seems like forever. I only know it’s a month because of the date on my cell.

  “You’ll take care of Levy?” Tara asks Allie. She ignores me. The truth is, I’m relieved no one expects much of me.

  Even though it’s already fall, it’s warm enough that we can go swimming. Rachel has on her suit. I brought her water wings with me. Well, I think Tara packed them or Mom, just in case we were able to swim at a motel on the way home. We think we’re all alone, and then here comes a woman with two children

  “Hey, Mom,” the woman’s daughter, I suppose, calls. “Wait.”

  The woman clasps towels, and a pail handle hangs from her forefinger. A boy, about five, totes trucks in each hand. A fuchsia swim ring with a bobbing sea horse’s head encircles the girl’s arm. The woman’s hair escapes its clip and flies in the breeze. Repeatedly, she flicks her head to get it out of her eyes, but the wind is persistent.

  The woman pulls three chaises around a table and plops a purple tote on one.

  “When’ll we eat?” the girl, who is probably eight or nine, whines.

  “Have an apple, Molly. They’re in the paper bag,” she says, pointing to the tote. Molly grabs one, takes a bite. She puts it down and jumps in the water. The boy pushes his trucks on a band of mulch surrounding impatiens. Levy joins him.

  Allie starts talking to the mom. Her name is Brooke. She’s from Lansing, where she works as an art teacher. She got laid off, and decided they’d travel. They make a big deal that we’re all from Michigan, that Brooke went to the university in Ann Arbor, and she and Allie talk about restaurants around the Diag and parks around the city like it’s an incredible coincidence, small world, six degrees of separation. Blah blah blah. Compared to the statistical improbabilities in my life, this is nothing. Then she asks Allie what we’re doing, and Allie tells her we’re helping Rachel and me move back home.

  Brooke nods as though she understands. They’ve just seen ancient Hopi dwellings at the H
omolovi Ruins, nearby at a State Park. If we have the time, we should see them. In June, the kids’ father took them to Disney World.

  Allie whispers to Brooke, telling her that my husband died a month ago. Then I hear Allie say, “And believe it or not, we’re traveling with a rap crew. Levy’s dad and mom.”

  Then Brooke laughs a rumbling chuckle, a laugh that’s more like a man’s than a woman’s. “Far as I’m concerned, it’s a roller coaster. I’m just along for a ride. Figuring is impossible.” Brooke is tall and angular, with high cheekbones and a defined nose. Her plump lips add softness and sensuality. She is one of those beauties that doesn’t need makeup.

  “The ‘shit happens’ view of life?” Allie says as she watches the three kids in the pool.

  “Exactly.”

  I lie on my chaise. Levy has left his truck and paddles in the shallow water with Rachel. Molly does backward somersaults and shouts, “Look, Mom, look what I can do.”

  Brooke sets out sandwiches and tells Molly to get the shoestring potatoes, tells Tyler to get the napkins. “Do I have to?” he grumbles as he leaves his trucks in the middle of grading a road.

  “Just them; we can eat this with our fingers.”

  I stare at ripples of water, the fake turquoise of the pool. There’s no diving board and only a few scrubby trees and plants. It must be because of the elevation and lack of rain.

  “You guys hungry?” Brooke asks Allie. “I’ve got extra cheese sandwiches.”

  “Thanks. We ate lunch right before we came here.”

  A man arrives with a net to clean the pool. Molly goes up to him, “Hi, mister,” she says.

  “I’m Martin, call me Martin.”

  “Okay, mister.”

  “She calls all men mister since her dad left,” Brooke explains.

  Molly grabs a handful of shoestring potatoes. “Can I go back in, Mom, pleeese?”

  “Just in the shallow end. When Martin is finished cleaning. You both can go.”

  “I love you, Mom.” Molly kisses Brooke’s cheek. “You’re the best mommy in the world.”