The Space Between Sisters

by Mary McNear

  But Win, as if knowing how short it would be, had saved everything from it—every photograph, every postcard, every memento—and put them all in neatly labeled cardboard boxes that Poppy referred to, privately, as “the marriage files.” Periodically, Win would take things out of the boxes and arrange them on her dresser top. Sometimes, they would be random things. But most of the time, they would all be part of a larger theme. Like now, for instance, the theme was obviously summer, or more specifically, the last summer Win and Kyle had spent together. And this would have been sweet, too, Poppy thought, fingering the ticket stubs to the state fair, if it wasn’t also, at the same time, a little . . . well, morbid. She looked at Win now and shook her head.

  “What? What’s wrong with my doing this?” Win asked, defensively. “These are just some memories, that’s all.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it,” Poppy said. “It’s just . . .” She paused, trying to find the right way—the kindest way—to put this into words. “Look, don’t get me wrong,” she said, finally. “I loved Kyle. You know that. And I loved the two of you together. And by all means, Win, keep a picture of him out, or a picture of the two of you out. But this stuff”—she indicated the dresser top—“put this stuff away. Otherwise you’re going to be like that character in the Dickens novel we had to read in high school. Remember her? What was her name? The woman who used to wear her old wedding dress all the time and—”

  “Miss Havisham,” Win said, impatiently. “Her name was Miss Havisham. And the novel was Great Expectations. And I doubt, very much, that you read the whole thing.”

  “I definitely did not read the whole thing,” Poppy said, laughing, and her laughter seemed, miraculously, to break the tension that had been building between them. “But I still remember her character. And I don’t want you to be like her.”

  “I’m not like her,” Win insisted. “I just like to keep things. And organize things. And . . . and remember things. Remember him. And I know you think that it shouldn’t be that hard. That I should be able to just hang a picture of him on the wall and be done with it. But it’s not like that. It’s more . . . complicated than that.”

  “Even now? I mean, Win, he died three years ago,” Poppy said, softly.

  “Three years is not a long time. Not in the general scheme of things.”

  Poppy was ready to argue this point, but then she changed her mind. After all, who was she to be giving Win advice? Who was she, in her current position, to be giving anyone advice? So she hugged her sister instead and said, “You know what? You’re right. Three years isn’t a long time. Pay no attention to me. If it weren’t for you, I’d be homeless right now. Seriously, I’d be sleeping in a bus shelter in Minneapolis.”

  Later, back in the bedroom she’d spent so many summers in, Poppy puzzled over its dimensions. Had she gotten bigger or had the room gotten smaller? Neither one, she decided. She hadn’t grown so much as a centimeter since she’d last stayed here, and the room, well, the room hadn’t shrunk, obviously; not when everything in it—except for Sasquatch, on one of the beds, and her boxes, piled unceremoniously in one of the corners—was exactly the same as it had been before. There was the twin bed and dresser set, made of a honeyed pine with decorative acorns carved into them, there were the blue-and-white-checked curtains and bedspreads and window seat cover, and there was the funny little bedside table lamp, whose iron base was the figure of a bear climbing a tree.

  And suddenly, Poppy was seized, for the second time that night, with the sensation of having entered a time capsule of her childhood. She walked over to the bookshelf now, and randomly pulled out a book. Nancy Drew’s The Secret of the Old Clock. It had belonged to her grandmother when she was a child. Poppy flipped it open, read the first page, and smiled. She put it back, and continued her tour of the room, opening one of the dresser’s top drawers—it still smelled vaguely of mothballs—and running her fingers over the robins-egg blue dish on the dresser top; the very one she and Win had used to keep their beaded bracelets in.

  Poppy wandered around the room a little more, and when her curiosity had been satisfied, she went and sat down on the window seat, a favorite girlhood haunt of hers, especially on rainy days. Tonight, though, she felt pensive. And not just about her sudden move, but about what she’d said to Win, too, about keeping all of those reminders of Kyle on display. Had she been too hard on her, she wondered now, too judgmental? After all, if Win had saved everything from her marriage, she at least had a place to put it all. Poppy, on the other hand, was essentially homeless. And then there was the question of whether the things she’d brought with her—she looked now at the rather pathetic collection of suitcases, boxes, and bags jumbled in the corner—were even worth keeping. She reached over and flipped open the lid of one of the cardboard boxes and then poked around in it a little. She found a waffle iron she’d never used before, an old high school yearbook, and a tennis racket with broken strings. Perfect, she thought. Perfect because these useless items seemed somehow to sum up the absurdity that had become her life. Almost thirty years on this earth, and she was still dependent on her sister for such useful things as grilled cheese sandwiches, clean towels, and the toothpaste she’d brushed her teeth with that night. And those were just the little things she’d needed from her sister. Because more than once in Poppy’s life, Win’s love and support had kept her going when it had seemed that nothing else would.

  Now she pulled her knees up under her chin, and wrapped her arms around her legs. She watched, idly, as a daddy longlegs navigated the other side of the window screen, and wondered how Win had gotten so far ahead of her. But it wasn’t only Win, of course, who was ahead of her. It was other people her age, too. People who had homes, hobbies, vacation plans, cars, careers, spouses, children . . . lives, she realized. Real lives. She’d sat by and watched as all of her friends, and Win, too, had chosen careers, or found work that they’d liked, and invested energy in relationships, or marriages, or families. What was wrong with her? Why wasn’t she able to be like them? And an image of her at sixteen came, unbidden, to her mind. She was sitting on the fire escape of their old apartment building in Minneapolis, crying, her hair tangled, the strap on her sundress torn. She tried to push the image away. She wouldn’t think about that now, not if she could possibly help it.

  And Sasquatch, as if on cue, chose this moment to leap from the bed he was lying on onto the window seat, and to bump his head against her hand in a signal that he wanted to be petted. He had an uncanny ability to sense when she was feeling down—which, lately, seemed to be most of the time. She smiled and stroked him under his chin. “I don’t know why I’m complaining, Sasquatch,” she said now, “not when I’ve got you in my life.” He blinked, seeming to take this compliment as his due, which of course it was. Since Poppy had adopted him as a neighborhood stray when she was sixteen, he’d been one of the few constants in her life. The one person—because to her he was more person than animal—whom she’d never disappointed, and who had never disappointed her, either.

  Now, with Sasquatch purring contentedly, she felt herself begin to relax for the first time that day. She’d read somewhere that people with dogs or cats had lower blood pressure than people without them, and she believed it. She felt a little more of the tension ebb out of her body. She wouldn’t think about . . . well, she wouldn’t think about a lot of things right now. But she especially wouldn’t think about the expression on Win’s face when she’d told her she would need to stay with her for the summer. Because for one second—one split second—she’d seen what Win was thinking. And what she was thinking was, Oh, Poppy, not again. Please tell me you haven’t screwed up again.

  She petted Sasquatch behind his ears, and noticed, not for the first time, that his fur had turned whitish around his eyes and mouth. He was still a perfectly beautiful cat, though, his fur a lovely shade of gray with white front paws that made him look as if he were wearing boots, and eyes the color of the Caribbean Sea. She didn’t know exactly
how old he was. The veterinarian she’d taken him to when she’d adopted him had guessed he’d been around two or three years old, which would make him around fifteen or sixteen now. But this—Sasquatch’s aging—was another thing she wouldn’t think about, for the simple reason that the thought of her life without him was, well, unthinkable.

  Besides, she decided, he would like it here this summer. At first, he might miss their old apartment in Minneapolis. He was an indoor-outdoor cat, and there he’d had a windowsill in the kitchen he’d liked to sun himself on, and a whole backyard in which to while away the afternoons. It would be different here, of course. In the city, the greatest threat to Sasquatch, from the animal kingdom at least, had been an irritable skunk or a mangy raccoon. Here, he was clearly not at the top of the food chain. There were fox, coyotes, timber wolves, and even mountain lions, though the latter, she knew, were rarely sighted.

  Still, he could go outside here, as long as she watched him like a hawk. No, she corrected herself. As long as she watched the hawks like a hawk, because for them, Sasquatch might be just another meal, and thinking about this, she suppressed a little shudder. In the next moment, though, she scooped him up, and deposited him on the end of one of the twin beds. It was time for both of them to be getting some sleep. And after she’d dug her nightgown out of a suitcase and changed into it, and gotten into bed and turned off the lights, she did what she always did at night when she was feeling out of sorts. She searched around under the covers with her foot until she found Sasquatch, a warm, solid lump at the end of the bed, and then she wedged her foot beneath him, and sighed, contentedly.

  Win didn’t understand how important to her he was, she thought, wriggling her foot. She never would. But if she thought Poppy was willing to just stash him away at a friend’s house for the summer, she was mistaken. And her final thought before she fell asleep that night was: Sasquatch is staying.

  After Poppy went to her room, Win washed her face at the bathroom sink and thought about dismantling her “shrine” to her and Kyle. Maybe, she thought, cupping water in her hands and splashing it on her face. Maybe she’d put those things away. But then again, maybe she wouldn’t. She turned the faucet off, and reached for a hand towel, looking in the mirror as she patted her face dry. The lighting in this bathroom was not flattering. She knew this from experience. Still, as she leaned closer now and scrutinized her reflection in the mirror, she found herself, in almost every way, wanting. What was wrong with her hair, for instance? She picked up a limp strand that had escaped from her ponytail and held it up for inspection. It was a color commonly referred to as dirty blond, but right now, it just looked dirty, though she had washed it that morning. And her eyes, which were an indeterminate shade of blue, were they always this puffy, or were they like this now because of her cat allergy? And what about her skin? She’d thought she had the beginnings of a summer tan, but under the fluorescent light fixture, her complexion had an unhealthy, almost greenish hue to it.

  “And so it begins,” she muttered. Because it was almost impossible for her to be with her sister without doing this, without subjecting her appearance to this kind of merciless self-appraisal, and cataloguing all of her physical flaws with the same obsessiveness with which she organized her kitchen utensils.

  Why did she even care now? she wondered, rubbing her face dry with the hand towel. Why did it even matter what she looked like when the only man she’d ever loved—a man who’d thought she was beautiful even on her worst day—was gone now? What difference did it make? Besides, in her more rational moments, Win knew she wasn’t unattractive. She knew, in fact, she was perfectly attractive. And if she hadn’t had Poppy for a sister, if she hadn’t been born exactly thirteen months after her, and spent her entire childhood linked, inextricably, to her in the minds of all of their friends, and neighbors, and classmates, she would probably have been more than satisfied with the way she looked.

  But their parents, who were both attractive people in their own right, had outdone themselves when they’d produced Poppy. It was as if their first daughter had won some kind of genetic lottery, inheriting the very best physical traits either one of them had to offer. By the time Win arrived, a little over a year later, her family’s genes had reverted back to type.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t look like Poppy. She did. She looked enough like her for people to know, without being told, that they were sisters. But somehow, this made it worse. As one of Win’s high school classmates had once remarked, with the casual cruelty of that age, It’s like Poppy’s the designer handbag, Win, and you’re the knockoff.

  Win hung up the hand towel and took a box of Benadryl out of the medicine cabinet, then popped one of the capsules out of its foil packet, and washed it down with another scoop of water from the faucet. There, that should head off the sneezing fit she felt coming on. She put the Benadryl back on the shelf, but she was careful this time not to look in the mirror once she’d closed the cabinet. Instead, she left the bathroom, imagining she already felt an over-the-counter drowsiness setting in, and thinking, still, about Poppy’s beauty. It wasn’t fair of her to resent Poppy for it. She hadn’t chosen it and, if she were to be believed, she couldn’t even see it herself. Certainly, she was almost completely without vanity. Even in this age of relentless social media, she stood apart. Her Facebook profile was of her cat, and she had never, to Win’s knowledge, taken a selfie. Her idea of getting ready for a night out on the town was brushing her teeth, and the only thing she owned that was even close to makeup was a tube of ChapStick.

  Win padded down the hallway, turning off lights as she went. No, she wouldn’t resent Poppy’s beauty, she decided, coming back into her bedroom. But she couldn’t help resenting her irresponsibility; Poppy’s life was, mysteriously enough, always on the verge of unraveling. And tonight, tonight was classic Poppy, though even by Poppy’s standards it seemed over the top. No warning she was coming. No mention of bringing anyone, either. She’d just shown up, with a cat that shed his weight in fur every day, a “friend” whose last name she didn’t know, and several cardboard boxes that contained the sum total of her life.

  Win got into bed then pummeled her pillow into a more acceptable shape and snapped off the bedside table lamp, before flopping down with a finality that suggested anger rather than sleep. Was it fair, though, she wondered now, to blame Poppy for her irresponsibility when you considered the way she’d been raised? Win, of course, responsible Win, had been raised the same way, but this time, it was she who had been the outlier and Poppy who had been true to their family’s form.

  Their parents had met, gotten married, and produced two children in quick succession, and then, as far as Win could tell, had never done another conventional thing in their lives again. They weren’t bad parents. They weren’t abusive or neglectful—well, not technically neglectful—though Win sometimes thought that between her father’s drinking and her mother’s self-absorption, they had skirted dangerously close to it. But their attitude toward their children, most of the time, could best be described as one of mild surprise. As if, having brought them into this world, they forever after seemed to be asking, not unkindly, What is it, exactly, that you two are doing here?

  In fact, Win thought, tossing irritably in her bed, that was what their father had said to them one morning when he’d walked into the apartment and found them eating cereal at the kitchen table. Win couldn’t remember how old she and Poppy were at the time, but they were young, young enough so that their feet didn’t touch the floor, but dangled off the chipped, wooden chairs they sat in. It was a summer morning, and they were dressed in cotton nightgowns, spooning cornflakes into their mouths when their father let himself in through the front door and walked into the kitchen.

  He didn’t look too great. His clothes were askew, his hair was standing on end, and his eyes were bloodshot. Now, of course, Win knew this was the result of a night of hard drinking, but then she’d only thought he looked strange and a little wild. He started to w
alk past them, then stopped, came back, and stared at them. “What are you two doing here?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

  “We live here,” Poppy said, not skipping a beat. Win nodded in agreement.

  “Right,” he said, as if just realizing this, and then he reached out and put a hand on each of their heads and gave them both a slightly unsteady pat. “You live here,” he said. “’Course you do.” And then he’d walked out of the kitchen. Still, Win thought, as she began to feel the tug of the Benadryl’s chemical drowsiness, Poppy was twenty-nine. She was old enough to be responsible for her actions, despite her upbringing. Wasn’t she?

  Win yawned. In recent years, she’d been prone to insomnia, but tonight she knew that wouldn’t be a problem. She thought about their houseguest, Everett West. She hadn’t had much of a chance to get to know him. He’d been so quiet during dinner, letting her and Poppy do most of the talking. And Poppy, who’d said she was exhausted, had insisted they all go to bed right after dinner. She wondered now if Everett was asleep. And if not, what was he doing? She had no idea. He was still a stranger to her. Could still be, for all she knew, a serial killer. Should she lock her bedroom door? No, if Everett were inclined to murder her and Poppy, he’d had more than ample time to do so already.

  Besides, he didn’t look like a serial killer. He looked like someone . . . someone with sleepy eyes, she decided, though she was so sleepy herself she could barely follow her own train of thought. He has such sleepy eyes. Such nice eyes. Not like her eyes. Her eyes felt itchy right now . . . so itchy. That cat. That cat would make her miserable. All summer long. Poppy would have to find someplace else for him, at least while she stayed here. And her last coherent thought, before she fell asleep was, That’s it, Sasquatch is going.