The Space Between Sisters

by Mary McNear

  “Hey, Sam,” Linc said, craning his neck to see what was happening in the next room. “Margot’s here.”

  “And?” Sam said, instantly annoyed. His relationship with Margot, or more accurately, his lack of a relationship with Margot, was a constant source of amusement for Linc and Byron.

  “And, I think it would be rude of you not to say hello to her when she’s driven ten miles out of her way to see you,” Linc said, taking his baseball cap off and running his fingers through his disheveled hair.

  “Linc, she’s here for the coffee,” Sam said, already exasperated.

  “Sorry, Sam. Our coffee’s not that good,” Linc said. “Now go put her out of her misery. She probably spent fifteen minutes this morning deciding which pair of socks to wear with her Tevas.”

  Sam gave Linc a dirty look, and went to say hello to Margot Hoffman. It was best, he’d learned, to get their daily conversation over with quickly. If he stalled, she stalled, too, finding excuses to wait around the store, and sending Linc and Byron into new fits of amusement. Besides, he told himself, he liked her. He really did. He just didn’t like her in the same way she appeared to like him.

  “Hi Sam,” she said, brightly, when he intercepted her at the coffee counter. “I have a big day planned for the kids,” she added, her brown eyes shining, and her brown ponytail bobbing with enthusiasm. Margot, an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, always looked to Sam as if she’d stepped out of the pages of an Eddie Bauer catalogue. Clearly, the woman was ready for a hike at any time of the day or night, with her quick-dry khaki clothing, her water bottle clipped to her belt loop, and her backpack slung expectantly over one shoulder. And then, of course, there were the sandals she insisted on wearing with socks, in all but the hottest or coldest weather. Sam had never understood this fashion statement, but perhaps it went with the territory, since Margot was the educator/naturalist at the small natural history museum in Butternut.

  When Sam was a kid this “museum” had housed a collection of old birds’ nests and taxidermied animals, but in recent years it had expanded to include new exhibits, and it had begun offering a summer program for “junior naturalists.” Sam’s children were “junior naturalists,” as were most of the children in Butternut who were between the ages of five and twelve and whose parents needed a convenient and mildly stimulating place to park them during their summer vacations.

  “What’s the theme for the day?” Sam asked Margot, who, along with the counselors she oversaw, was very theme oriented.

  “It’s ‘Raptor Rapture,’” she said. “We have a ranger visiting with a tame falcon and several other birds of prey.” She beamed. “They’ve all been injured and can’t be released back into the wild, but they should make for a very exciting program. By the way, Sam,” she added, “did you get the email on our family programs for summer? We have one coming up called ‘What a Hoot.’ It’s a nighttime walk where we learn about owls and then try to spot them in their natural habitat.”

  “That sounds really . . . interesting,” Sam said. “I’ll have to check our calendar.”

  “Hopefully, you’ll be free,” she said, smiling up at him. But their conversation ended there, when the first of the day’s deliveries arrived, and Sam had to say a hurried good-bye. Later, though, in a rare moment of calm, he felt guilty about her. The expression on her face when she’d told him about the family program had been so . . . so hopeful. He hated to disappoint her, but at the same time, he didn’t want to lead her on. There’d been times, over the last year, when he’d tried to care about her, tried, even, to be attracted to her; she was so obviously interested in him. In a practical sense, being involved with Margot could have eased the weekday burdens of his single parenthood. She was great with kids, and he could see her taking the boys on informative hikes in the woods near their cabin, or doing age appropriate craft activities with Cassie at their kitchen table. But he wasn’t someone who could date a woman for purely practical reasons. Besides, Sam knew you couldn’t always choose whom to fall in love with. Sometimes, they chose you.

  CHAPTER 6

  Poppy’s eyes were closed, and she was lying perfectly still. She was in her bikini, on a beach towel at the end of the dock, the sun warm on her skin, the lake water slapping gently against the dock’s pilings, and the air redolent with dried pine needles, the not unpleasant tang of algae, and her own coconut scented sunscreen. She wasn’t awake, and she wasn’t asleep. She was suspended somewhere between the two. And it was perfect. She was perfect. And she would continue to be perfect, as long as she didn’t open her eyes, didn’t move, and, above all, didn’t think.

  “Poppy?” Win called from the cabin’s back door. Poppy ignored her and tried to return to her previously blissful state. But Win was not to be deterred.

  “Poppy,” she said again, and this time she was standing over her.

  Poppy sighed, raised herself up on her elbows, and lifted her sunglasses up onto her head.

  “Yes?” she said, squinting up at her.

  “Are you going to lie here all day?”

  “That was the plan,” she said, lying back down. She closed her eyes, already drowsy again, and listened to the distant hum of a motorboat entering the bay, a sound that had provided the backdrop for so many childhood summer afternoons on the lake.

  “Poppy.”

  “What?” Poppy said, slightly startled. She raised herself up again.

  “Aren’t you worried . . .”

  “That I’ll get sunburned?” Poppy said. “No. I’m wearing SPF 100. I found it in your medicine cabinet. I didn’t even know sunscreen went that high.”

  “No, I mean, aren’t you worried that you won’t accomplish anything today?”

  “Accomplish anything?” Poppy said, sitting all the way up this time. “Win, it’s summertime. It’s a time of year when people go on vacation. When they relax. So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m relaxing. That’s what I’m accomplishing.” But even with the sun in Poppy’s eyes, she could see that Win was unimpressed by her logic.

  “Okay, well, in the time you’ve been relaxing,” Win said, “I’ve paid my bills, had my oil checked, refilled the prescription for my allergy medication, gone grocery shopping, and made lasagna.”

  Poppy sighed, louder this time, and lay back down again. This conversation was not going to end well, she reflected. She was not completely surprised, though, that they were going to have it now. She’d been waiting for it, in fact, for a couple of days.

  Still, she had to admit, her and Win’s first several days as housemates had gotten off to a good start. No, a great start. They’d had fun, just as Poppy had promised they would. They’d made their favorite brownies, from a Barefoot Contessa recipe, and when they’d gotten impatient over how long it was taking them to bake, they’d taken them out of the oven before they were done and eaten them, with spoons, directly out of the pan. They’d spent a day in their pajamas, binge-watching an entire season of Scandal. They’d played Monopoly. Or they’d tried to play Monopoly, only to discover that too many of the pieces were missing to play it successfully. But they’d had fun figuring that out, anyway. They’d taken their grandfather’s ancient motorboat out on the lake—Poppy having miraculously coaxed its engine back to life—and they’d coasted around the little islets, and beaches, and coves in their bay, waiting for the engine to give out again. And when it had, finally, given out, they’d flagged down a couple of fishermen and gotten a tow back to their dock. And they’d sat on that dock, one sultry afternoon, and watched a thunderstorm approach from across the lake, and then ran back up to the cabin just seconds before the sky opened up above them, unleashing a torrential downpour.

  But most of all, those first couple of days, they’d talked. They’d talked, and they’d talked, and they’d talked. They’d talked about their parents, they’d talked about their childhood, they’d talked about old friends, and some newer friends, and about one of Win’s colleagues at the middle school who drove her crazy with her passi
ve aggressive remarks. They’d talked about whether Poppy should get bangs—they’d decided against it—and whether Win should get a kayak—they’d decided she should, but when they’d looked at the prices of kayaks online they’d changed their minds.

  They’d talked the way only sisters and best friends could talk, starting a new subject before they were done with the old, and then coming back to the old one later and picking up right where they’d left off. They talked like this because they knew they would never exhaust their topics of conversation. Each reexamination of a subject could offer new insights. And it could always—always—be talked about some more. Now, of course, Poppy fretted, they wouldn’t be talking to each other—they’d be having a talk with each other. And nothing could be more different than these two things. The talking was about anything, anything at all. The talk was about Poppy, and about her need to find direction in her life.

  But again, Poppy had seen this coming, because as perfect as things had seemed between them those first several days, there had still been warning signs. Win, for instance, had expressed displeasure over the way Poppy had loaded the dishwasher. Apparently, there was a “right” way to do it and a “wrong” way to do it, something that struck Poppy as absurd. Everyone knew the whole point of loading a dishwasher was to get as many dishes into it as possible, as quickly as possible. Who cared where the glasses went, or the plates or the bowls? There’d been a couple of other sticking points, too. Win had come into her room yesterday to find Sasquatch lying on her bed—a definite breach of protocol. She’d shooed him away, but apparently he’d left some fur behind—a miniscule amount in Poppy’s opinion, but Win had still made a big deal out of having to wash all of her bedding. And then there’d been the matter of the wet towel Poppy had left on the bathroom floor that morning; Win had delivered it to her room with no words, but with a foreboding expression on her face. Poppy had promised to do better, but honestly, she thought, what was the point of Win giving her all of those towels to use if she couldn’t leave the occasional one on the floor?

  But the biggest problem between them right now was also the oldest problem between them: money. Or, more specifically, lack of money, at least on Poppy’s part. Because while they’d agreed, the morning after Poppy’s arrival, that they would split everything fifty-fifty this summer, it was fast becoming clear to Win that Poppy was already running out of money. Poppy hadn’t told her this; not in so many words. But Win had figured it out. The night Win had shopped for and cooked their dinner, for instance, they’d had chicken picatta. The night Poppy had shopped for it and cooked it they’d had frozen pizza.

  “Poppy,” Win said again now, not even bothering to conceal her annoyance.

  “All right,” Poppy said, sitting up. “I’m done. No more sunbathing.” She stood up, feeling slightly dazed, and began to gather up her belongings. “Let’s have the talk.”

  “The talk?”

  “The talk you want us to have,” Poppy said, starting up the dock.

  “I don’t want us to have a talk,” Win said.

  “You don’t?”

  “Okay, I do. But not right now. I thought we could have it over dinner. That’s why I made the lasagna. And why I thought you could buy us a bottle of wine to go with it.”

  “All right, I’ll drive into town,” Poppy said, starting up the steps that led to the cabin. She was already calculating what was the least amount of money she could spend on a drinkable bottle of wine.

  “Oh, you don’t have to drive into town for it,” Win said, following her. “Why don’t you just go to Birch Tree Bait.”

  “That old place where they sell worms?”

  “Well, yeah, they still sell those there. But it’s been totally redone. It’s not just bait and tackle anymore. They actually have a grocery section now, too, and you can get a surprisingly decent bottle of wine there.”

  Decent as in cheap? Poppy wanted to ask, but didn’t.

  “Okay, I’ll get the wine,” Poppy said, breezing in through the cabin’s back door, and then pausing for a moment to enjoy the dimness and coolness inside after her marathon sunbathing session. What she really would have liked to do right then was to take a long shower and wash off all of that sunscreen, but she knew Win well enough to know that the sooner she left, the better. Win had that set to her jaw now that Poppy had learned to be wary of. Maybe if she could get a few glasses of wine into her before their talk, it would go better, she thought. Maybe, if she played her cards right, they wouldn’t have to have the talk at all.

  Poppy hurried into her room now, and gave Sasquatch, who was lying on one of the beds, a quick pat, then rummaged around in her dresser for something to wear. She ended up pulling on a T-shirt and a pair of blue jean cutoffs, and then glanced in the mirror with the thought of doing something about her hair. In the end, though, she left it in a messy bun and instead groped around in the closet for her flip-flops.

  “All right, I’ll be back soon,” she called as she headed for the front door. She grabbed her handbag and was on her way out when Win came after her. “Aren’t you forgetting something, Pops?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “My car keys?”

  “Oh, right,” Poppy said, a little sheepishly, as Win went to get them for her. And here was another source of tension between them: Poppy was completely dependent on Win for transportation.

  But once Poppy was out on the road, the windows rolled down and the radio cranked up, she forgot about all of this. It was impossible not to; this stretch of Butternut Lake Drive, the stretch that led away from town, was even prettier than the stretch that came before it. It hewed more closely to the lake, so that on a sun-drenched day like today, you never lost sight of the shimmer of water through the trees. And the trees! Their leaves were still the pale green of early summer, but they were so profuse that the light filtering through them was itself a faint green, and the effect was as if Poppy was driving not on a back road, but on an underwater byway.

  She was so entranced by the scenery that she shot right past Birch Tree Bait, and had to slam on the brakes and back up to it. “Wow,” she said, softly, turning into the graveled parking lot. She would never have guessed this was the same place her grandfather used to take her and Win to when they were children, he to put fresh bait in a Styrofoam cooler, and she and Win to choose ice cream bars from a rusted-out freezer in back. This place was nice, she thought, parking the car. Its fishing dock had been shored up and repainted and the beach, which had once been filled with tall weeds and discarded cans, was now a small crescent of golden sand. As she headed up the front steps of the building, she noticed that the old dilapidated porch had been completely renovated, too. Several Adirondack chairs were scattered in the shade and a charming porch swing swayed in the breeze. Over the front door hung a green painted sign with a trout emerging from the water and the words BIRCH TREE BAIT painted under it. She paused for a moment, on her way in, to watch a little girl playing with a baton. Were girls still doing that? she wondered. But of course they were. It was only Poppy who’d relegated it to ancient history.

  Once inside, Poppy found the beer and wine aisle. She was disappointed by the wine selection, though. It’s not that it wasn’t good. It was too good. Jeez, she thought, as she scanned the shelves for an inexpensive bottle, since when did fishermen spend sixteen ninety-nine on a bottle of wine? Still, by searching carefully, she found a few cheaper bottles, including a red wine, tucked way in the back, and covered with dust, whose price tag said $2.89. She picked it up and examined its label carefully. It looked fine, just a little . . . dusty. But she could wipe that off before she got home. Besides, wine was wine. She’d never understood all of those adjectives people threw around about it. Dry, oaky, fruity. What difference did it make, as long as it was drinkable?

  She glanced around now, found the front counter, and headed over to it, feeling pleased with her choice. Not only could she afford this bottle of wine, she’d have a little money left over after she pai
d for it. But as soon as she got to the counter an old anxiety crept up on her. There were three men standing there—one younger, probably in his mid-twenties, and wearing a baseball cap, another about ten years older, probably in his mid to late thirties, standing behind the counter, and another one, an older white haired man wearing a seersucker hat—and when they saw her waiting there, they immediately stopped talking to each other and stared at her. Just . . . stared at her. And she did this thing she did whenever people stared at her like that. She just kind of . . . went inside of herself. It was hard to explain. It was like she was there, but at the same time, she wasn’t there. She couldn’t remember exactly when she’d started doing this, probably in adolescence, but it had become practically second nature to her. Like right now, for instance, she put the bottle of wine on the counter and slid her wallet out of her handbag, and the whole time she was doing this, she was staring at a flyer someone had pinned up on a bulletin board behind the counter. It had to do with a bluegrass music festival—which was something she had no interest in—but she pretended to read it with total concentration.

  She was staring at it so hard, in fact, that she was only vaguely conscious that the man behind the counter was speaking to her. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” she asked, tearing her eyes away from the flyer.

  “I said, ‘It’s at the fairgrounds on Sunday.’ Are you interested? Because I’ve heard some of the bands, and they’re pretty good.”

  Was he asking her out? She felt her face flush with irritation. She hated it when guys did this. And she never understood it, either. Why would they think she’d be willing to go out with a stranger? And, in this man’s case, since when did buying a bottle of wine from someone constitute an introduction to him? Now, though, she took a five-dollar bill out of her wallet and placed it on the counter, and, as she did so, she leveled her gaze at him. “I don’t date people I don’t know,” she said.