by Monica Wood
Two, she wants a drink. Her insides feel scratched and burned. At first she blamed this feeling on the crash, on thoughts of the crash, but in truth she remembers none of it. She remembers this feeling, though, and the swampiness inside her head, from the other times she stopped drinking just to make sure she could.
Because she wants a drink so badly, because she has so much time on her hands to consider how badly, she has thought of sending Ben—her newest friend—in a search through Faith’s cupboards. This scheme, which she has very nearly carried out, shames her.
“Do you need anything?” Nancy asks, appearing at the door. Connie feels like the prized spectator in a box seat, watching a play in the hall, the same characters appearing and reappearing. Nancy is straight and starched as always, in the same costume right down to the white running shoes.
“No, thank you.” Actually Connie wants urgently to pee, but the thought of Nancy’s skeletal fingers peeling down the lace hem of her panties gives her a shudder. She’ll wait for Faith. She’ll hold out. She’ll almost enjoy her discomfort, her stubbornness, for it will give her something to dwell on, a way to measure the rest of the afternoon. It’s better than dwelling on her shriveling life.
She thinks of herself now as a thin pink shell. Her years of motion—the swirl of plane trips and colleagues and passers-by and lovers and, more lately, the brand-new sister—seem nothing more than a storm which had happened around her while her only true existence had lain the whole time in its motionless eye. Without the accouterments of her profession, her life came down to long talks with Stewart and twice-monthly dinners with Faith.
During her last days in the hospital, she’d had too much time to think. She knows now why they call it a “battery” of tests, for she had indeed felt battered. And the news was good. “I’m happy to report you’ve come through this as a reasonable facsimile of yourself,” the doctor joked. She remembers the effort of smiling. “I was hoping I’d come through as a reasonable facsimile of someone else.” She was only flirting a little, but now she wonders if the weakened speak the truth.
“I don’t know why you’re paying me,” Nancy sighs. “You could train your sister’s dog to pull your bedspread down.” She glares accusingly at Sammy, who slumbers near the doorway, then she turns, exiting into the wings of the house.
Ben is home, late. Connie knows it even before the dog does, a certain shifting in the timbers of the house. She has lain so long in its shelter she could be part of it, a floorboard or stair tread, and knows its inhabitants the way the house must—their footfalls and handprints, how the door opens, hard or soft.
The dog lifts his head, rises from his late-afternoon torpor, and trots out. She hears his nails scrabbling on the stairs, the door opening (hard), the cheerful punctuations of Ben’s voice.
He comes to her with a stack of coffee-table books, huge, colorful, one-subject tomes: wildflowers, birds, houses, and, inexplicably, a book on the first computers. “I got these from school,” he tells her. A flame of self-consciousness rises red on his cheeks. “I wasn’t sure about the birds.” He opens one on her lap. “See? It won’t fold up on you like those other books.”
She laughs. “Ben, you’re a genius.” She looks at the books, at his own awkward tending, and puzzles over what he had assumed would interest her. He’s over an hour later than usual; he must have taken a long time deciding. She taps her casts together and lifts a page with the tips of her fingers, gingerly turning over the leaf. “It works.”
He runs his hand over his forehead the way his father does. She looks at the turned page, a photograph and description of a black-poll warbler. These are books he would have gotten for his mother. “Thanks, Ben.”
He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I can’t stay with you, Aunt Connie, I’ve got to get over to Rick’s house.” He thrusts his hands into his pockets and looks at her. “We’re starting a band.”
Connie grins. “Well, well. Another Spaulding in show biz.”
“Don’t tell Mom, okay?”
“I won’t.”
Thus confided in, she watches him go, then elbows the oversized, inappropriate book to one side and hobbles herself out of bed. She hops to the window, propped by her hip against the wall, to watch him trundle down the street with his guitar case swinging from one hand; the dog, tail similarly swaying, wends after him. Already the afternoon is waning, its wintry light low and gleamy on the drifts.
Back in bed she wrestles the book into her lap and, page by page, looks at the birds. She tries to see what Faith sees: their furlike feathers, perhaps, or their stripes and colors. She forgets her confinement, her stripped life, and concentrates on this gift from her nephew, liking it for his sake. She forgets that Nancy is in the house, forgets to count how long before Faith comes, forgets her full bladder. Her nephew’s silly secret has left a sweet stain, and she regrets every moment of his life she so purposefully missed.
She took the boys for an afternoon once, an outing she’d offered in a fit of longing. The boys were just children then, and the sight of them together—dark and light, big and small—had filled her with the most inexplicable yearning. Joe had seized upon her offer, Joe the family man, the man of many relatives, and had foisted them on her that very day. She took them back to her apartment and recognized all at once her foolishness. She didn’t know the first thing about children, for she herself had never been a child.
They rescued her, after a fashion. After an awkward hour in which the boys sauntered around the apartment, investigating her things, Chris engineered a complicated game of cops and robbers, thrusting Connie into the role of a helpless maiden who’d been tangled somehow in a bank robbery. She was never clear on whether she was a cop or a robber, but she dutifully repeated the lines the boys granted her as they walked her through this game with the plodding patience of caretakers with the afflicted. First you do this, Aunt Connie; then you do that. She hid behind her sofa as instructed; when they pretended to rescue or arrest her—she couldn’t tell which—she squeaked oh, oh in a woeful monotone, catching the tolerant pity in her nephews’ faces. The afternoon was a deep embarrassment, for it was she who played the child, the children playing wizened elders with all the answers.
Ben’s small confidence has somehow restored her from that day.
By the time Faith comes home, helps her into the bathroom, brings a snack on a plate, Connie is restless again.
“Has Isadora called?” she asks.
The question makes Faith look tired. Her hair is gathered into a clip at the back of her neck, leaving her face vulnerable to its expressions. She sits on the edge of the bed. As she reaches to cut an apple into pieces, her sleeve rides up on her arm, revealing a small wrist with a sharp button of a wristbone. Connie wonders if to other people she and Faith look frail: though they are tall, like Isadora they are slender and small-boned.
“Did you hear me?” she says, chewing a piece of apple.
“She hasn’t called, Connie.”
“I just asked. Did you have a bad day?”
“It was good. He was running on time.”
“Are you sick of me?”
“I’m sick of your asking if Isadora called.”
Connie chews up another piece of apple, thumps her arm on the stack of books. “Ben brought these.”
Faith looks them over. She smiles with recognition. “I hope he’s not trying to turn you into me.”
“Don’t you think it’s strange that she hasn’t called?”
“No.”
A swatch of cold, colorless light streaks through the curtain onto Faith’s cheek, already fading as she sits there. Her skin brightens and pales at the same time. Her face becomes white, saltlike, rendering her immovable as Lot’s wife.
“Do you think everything’s all right?” Connie says.
“Yes.”
Connie presses. What else is there for her to think about? Two hundred dead people? “I don’t understand why she hasn’t called. I hope nothing’
s happened.”
Faith blinks, a statue blinking. “Don’t worry about Isadora. We’ll hear from her when she needs something.”
She cuts the rest of the apple into small pieces that Connie manages to maneuver between her fingertips. For a while they sit in silence, the squish of apple between Connie’s teeth the only sound.
Connie pushes the rest of the apple away. “Faith, give her a chance.”
“To what?”
Connie sighs. “Are you doing this on purpose?”
“Look,” Faith says. “I have nothing against her. I like her. I believe she’s related to us. What more do you want?”
Connie looks away. “I don’t know.” But something.
Faith takes the plate with the remaining pieces of apple and plunks it unceremoniously on the bedside table. She stands up and looks toward the window, her yard, the street, and beyond that Connie can only guess. She seems to be searching for something. The light is draining rapidly in the way of winter, and Faith’s rigid form darkens from the bottom up: her blue skirt deepens to gray, then the folds in her blouse blur into a murky wave, and finally the maddening secret of her face dissolves into shadow.
“Did she do something?” Connie asks. She wants to know and she doesn’t. She understands, against her will, that Faith is fighting her out of kindness. “You said she was at my bedside, Faith. You said she was there around the clock.”
“She was there. That doesn’t make her a saint.”
“Did I say she was a saint?”
“All right.” Faith takes the plate and heads for the door.
“Wait a minute,” Connie says. At the corner of her vision the picture book lies open, a magnificent photograph of birds in a nest, their beaks open, impossibly huge, bigger than their own heads. They look to her like her own life, her own gaping mouth. She filled it with food, wine, the tongues of men, her own bunched fist in her frightened nights. I want, I want, a small voice calls.
“I never said she was a saint,” Connie says. “All I ever said was she’s our sister.” She sits up, scuffs her bare foot on the carpet just to feel herself moving. “God, I want a drink.”
Faith waits, stolid and unhappy, staring at Connie’s jittery foot. She could be nine years old, Connie thinks, mad at me for begging.
“Isadora would get me a drink. It’s not so much to ask.”
“Isadora isn’t here, Connie.”
“If she were here she’d get me a drink.”
Their words are dropping like beads of hail. Faith’s eyes are fixed on Connie’s, like the stubborn little beams from the astro-phones that had to line up exactly.
“Isadora would do it,” Connie repeats, amazed at herself, at her smallness. She could be five years old, she wants to be five years old, demanding what she needs.
It is suddenly dusk. Faith sets the plate on the dresser and presses both hands to her temples. “The things you want, Connie—they’re always so impossible.”
Connie reaches for the table lamp, the silly green scallops of her robe shimmying down the ridges of her cast, and tries to press the lamp on. She can’t quite manage it. “Can you turn this on?” Connie says. She wants to see Faith’s face. Faith doesn’t move. “Faith, turn on the goddamned light.” Faith steps back toward the door, flicks on the overhead light. It sounds like a snapshot and there they are, exposed.
“Was she really at my bedside?” Connie asks. “You said around the clock. Were you lying?”
Faith is squinting in the sudden light. “It wasn’t exactly around the clock, now that you mention it.”
“Just tell me.”
“She left after two days, maybe three,” Faith says. “She got tired of playing the grieving sister and went back to New York. I believe her exact words were ‘the show must go on.’ ”
Connie can picture Isadora’s leaving, the narrow shoulders turning away.
“I’m sorry,” Faith says. “Really, Connie.”
“Why did you lie?”
“I didn’t have anything else to give you.” She waits. “When she was there, she was wonderful. She talked to you incessantly, just the way the doctors said to. And then she left.”
“Well,” Connie says. “She had her commitments. I never expected her to drop her life for me.”
“Yes you did.”
Connie looks up, startled at the bitter tang in Faith’s voice. “No I didn’t,” she insists, but she feels found out, caught at something not so much shameful as greedy.
“We thought you were dying,” Faith says. Her voice is flat and tired.
All at once Connie is angry, angry to be trapped in the stingy silence of Faith’s care while Isadora’s generous voice gladdens the hearts of a pack of strangers in a theater 3,000 miles away.
“You want to hear something really funny?” Connie says. “I had myself believing you two argued about taking me in. That I had two sisters out there vying for the honor.” She laughs, a small lonesome sound.
“No,” Faith says. “Only one.”
Connie sinks back on her pillow, crushed under the weight of disappointment. “I thought I finally had a real sister,” she murmurs, then freezes, horrified, but it’s too late, her words are zigzagging into the room like a let-go balloon.
Faith says nothing. A few strands of hair have come loose just at the hairline, the fine glinty strands left over from childhood.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Connie says. “Faith, I’m sorry.”
“You aren’t going to get what you want from her, you know. I don’t think either one of us was quite what she was hoping for.”
“Faith, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
Faith looks fragile and ghostly beneath her undone hair. All this care has taken its toll. “I’m not hurt,” she says. She turns to go.
“It’s not the same for you, Faith. You have what you need.”
Faith lingers at the door but does not turn around. It hurts to look at her.
“I need a drink.”
Faith’s shoulders drop. “No.”
“Will it kill you to get me a drink?” She can only see Faith’s back.
“You know who you sound like?” Faith says.
Connie’s anger returns as a gulping want. “One drink, Faith. A glass of wine, anything.”
She won’t turn around. “Listen to yourself.”
“Will it kill you?”
Finally Faith wheels around, her face crumpled with disgust. “You sound exactly like Delle.”
Connie gasps. “Go to hell.”
Faith snaps off the light, her voice cutting a bitter swath in the dark. “Just listen.”
“Faith!” Connie bellows into the room. She stumbles out of bed, sliding on the carpet and landing with a thud on her hip. “Ow! Goddammit! Faith!”
She hears the harsh whisper of clothing as Faith moves from the door, the furious lash of footsteps against the stairs, a rustle in the downstairs closet, then the languorous groan of the front door opening and closing. A gravelly crunch of snow under urgent footfalls that shortly fade away.
Faith is gone. Connie squints into the dark, unable to move. Her foot cast is locked under the bottom edge of the bed, but in the dark she can’t quite see it. She rotates her caught foot warily—her anger subsiding, fear surging into its place—until a twinge of pain lances her ankle, straight up through the knee. “Damn!” she mutters. She freezes, not daring to move. The dark is heavy and ominous, the outline of pleasant hunks of furniture gone gray and mean in the wake of Faith’s flight.
“Faith!” Connie calls. The house answers, a mild soughing of tree against shingle. Connie drops against the carpet, the rough pile grinding against her cheek. “Faith!” She turns her foot again until the pain stops her. “Faaaith!” Her voice drops to a whisper. “Faith,” she murmurs, then gives up and cries like a child.
The snow in Faith’s yard shines silver-blue from the lights of her neighbor’s house. Faith does not know this neighbor, though he’s
lived next door since Ben was born. She waves to him when she drives by in the car or walks the dog, and he waves back. She has never stopped to talk. He has relatives—children and grandchildren, she surmises—who visit from time to time, and three or four cats that sleep inside the windows, draped over each other like a pile of clothes. He and Joe have spoken a bit over the years, about lawn mowers and garbage collection and storm windows, and sometimes she has stood by, watching these conversations with a polite smile. She would probably not recognize her neighbor if she ran into him, say, at the office or in a store. The thought fills her with an inexplicable dread.
She makes her way to the back yard, lit by the neighbor’s rear windows. His entire house is lit, as if he lived there with dozens of people. He must be inside, alone with all those lights. She moves past Chris’s car, its back end smashed into a fistlike shape. Though it roosts motionless in the quiet gleam, she gives it wide berth, half afraid it might start up on its own, a stark hiccup in the seamless air. Everything in and around this house today seems poised. Coiled.
Though it has been dark for fifteen minutes, maybe more, Faith thinks she hears the wisp of a chickadee in the branches. She stands still a moment, listening to the winter evening descending upon the neighborhood: the muffled hum of Brighton Avenue traffic a few blocks away, the distant voice of downtown, the faraway whine of a siren. In her head still reverberates the desperate call of her name from Connie’s throat. Now she is sure she hears one lisping bird, a smudge of sound. She digs a finger into one of the feeder holes and scoops out a few seeds.
The chickadee is here, she can hear it. She isn’t cold, though she shivers. A few striped seeds glint on her hand. Somewhere below this snow-packed ground, spring is already moving, its earthen scent somehow seeping up. She holds out her palm, out of habit, knowing it’s past feeding time, when the lone bird swoops out of the dark and lands on her hand. She is so astonished, so thrilled by the pronged feet stabbing her skin, that she whips her hand away and the startled bird disappears into the night.
