As Close as Sisters

by Colleen Faulkner

When Mia spotted me, she called out to me, and the little conference broke up. Mia had a guilty look on her face. I could see it even in the pale light. Maura was a good liar, but I had always been able to read Mia’s face.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Nothing,” Mia said quickly.

  Clearly it was something. I looked at Lilly, who conveniently decided to check her cell phone. “I was getting ready to call you. Fireworks start in six minutes.”

  I looked at Janine. She was sitting on her butt now, texting someone. She looked guilty, too.

  “Come on. What’s going on?”

  Aurora glanced at me. “We were just talking. Boy stuff.”

  “You meet someone, Mia?” I shifted my gaze to Maura. “Or is it Viktor?” I added a Russian accent. It wasn’t very good, but Lilly laughed.

  “Boy talk not intended for mothers,” Aurora explained.

  “Oh.” I sat in the chair next to Lilly, trying not to feel left out. “But I want to hear. Why can’t you tell me?”

  “Because, Mom.” Maura was still on her knees. She drew little swirls with her finger in the sand at my feet. “If we say anything, even just mention a guy’s name, you start asking questions. You ask every day, like it’s a big deal.”

  I started to say, “I do not,” but I guess I do. It wasn’t as if I wanted to push boys and dating on them, just that I’m sometimes desperate to talk to my daughters, about anything, just to talk to them. There are days when it seems like there isn’t a single subject that isn’t taboo. I suppose if they mentioned someone’s name, I might grab it and run with it. Not such a great strategy, in retrospect.

  “Boys?” I said, pretty sure they were all telling a big fib. More likely they were talking about me. About how I looked, how I was feeling. How I was handling my diagnosis. Handling being here with them for what would be my last summer. “You two better not be keeping something from me,” I warned Mia and Maura. I opened the cooler beside Lilly. I reached for a soda but took a beer instead. “And you three better not be protecting them. I’m still their mother.” I held the beer with one hand and pointed with the other at my daughters. “I’m still your mother.”

  “We’ve got it, Mama Hen.” Aurora sounded bored. She bored easily, especially when it came to dull topics such as work or child rearing. “Pass me a beer.”

  17

  Aurora

  I’m not going to feel guilty. And Lilly can’t make me. She ought to know that by now.

  I could feel her staring at me. I didn’t look at her. Instead, I tipped back the beer bottle and took a swig. It was mediocre beer, but it was local. We always drank local beer when we were here. I can’t remember why.

  The first fireworks exploded out over the ocean, and everyone oohed and aahed. I’m not into fireworks. Never have been. But even though it doesn’t fit my personality, I’m into tradition.

  Lilly thought we should tell McKenzie about Maura almost getting arrested. Actually, she thought we should make Maura do it. Hold her down in the sand, maybe, let crabs nibble at her bare toes until she confessed?

  Lilly was all “It’s a mother’s right to know what’s going on in her children’s lives. I would want to know if my daughter had gotten into that kind of trouble.”

  I think that was easy for Lilly to say when her child is tucked safely beneath her belly button. She has no idea what she’s in for. And maybe that’s good. But I don’t think she’s being realistic about how hard it’s going to be to be a parent. How no matter how hard she tries, she’s going to fall flat sometimes. Probably more times than she doesn’t. I don’t think she’s going to be a bad mom. I think she’ll be better than most. But I still think she’ll screw up sometimes, and that’s going to be hard for her to deal with.

  Lilly also doesn’t get the reality of the situation here with Maura and Mia and McKenzie. She doesn’t get that McKenzie doesn’t have enough time left to make a difference. Telling her about Maura’s tangle with the law wouldn’t do anything but worry McKenzie. McKenzie can’t change the path Maura is already on. Maybe that’s cold. Maybe I can’t think like a mother because while I might have given birth, Christ knew I was never a mother and would never be a mother. But I really think it’s better for McKenzie if she doesn’t know.

  As to whether or not it was better for Maura? I don’t know. I don’t know how much I care. Maybe I will later. Once McKenzie is dead. But right now, McKenzie is the one I care about.

  Lilly is blowing the whole thing out of proportion anyway. It was one little tangle with the po-po. She didn’t get arrested. No harm, no foul.

  I think Lilly is a drama queen. I think she looks for things to get upset about. She looks for things I do wrong. She’s never approved of anything I do. It doesn’t matter how many sculptures I sell or how much money I make. It will never be enough for Lilly. I’ll never be good enough for her.

  I took another pull on my beer. The fireworks were exploding in the sky: reds and blues. They were loud. I looked out at the dark water. I missed it. I already swam this afternoon. No second dip tonight. I have to limit myself. I get too dark in the water sometimes. My head gets too crazy. I swim to relieve tension. At least that’s what I tell people, but sometimes I wonder. Clearly I swim to escape, but I wonder why else I do it. What’s wrong with me that I need to push myself that way? Lose myself?

  I glanced over at McKenzie. She was enjoying the fireworks. Her smile made me smile. Who would make me smile when she was gone? I loved Lilly and Janine. They’re my left and my right hand. But McKenzie . . . she’s my heart. She’s the heart of all of us.

  A lump rose in my throat, and I swallowed it with a beer chaser.

  I still couldn’t quite believe she was dying. I couldn’t believe she was going to fucking die on me.

  I glanced at Lilly. She was smiling, too. Looking up at the sky, in awe. She was so happy to be here. She knew how to be in the moment. Lilly would be okay when McKenzie died. She had the baby coming. She had her bump-on-a-log husband who loved her.

  I tipped the beer, drinking the last of it.

  Janine was sitting beside me on the towel. She was watching the fireworks, but she wasn’t here with us. She wasn’t in the moment. I wondered if she was thinking about the lawsuit. I haven’t been able to tell from the things she’s said this week if she really thinks something could come of it, or if she’s just pissed that someone would have the audacity to make a complaint against her.

  Maybe she isn’t thinking about the lawsuit, though. Maybe she’s thinking about the new girlfriend. Home alone while Janine is here with us. She’d said that she really liked her. I suspect she really liked her. That’s why she hasn’t brought her around and won’t talk about her.

  It was killing McKenzie and Lilly, not knowing the details. I don’t care so much. I want Janine to be happy. I just don’t think someone else is ever going to make her happy. Not that she can’t be happy. I don’t believe that Buddy took that away from her. I just think that her happiness has to come from herself.

  Guess I should take a lesson from my own book.

  “How about another beer?” I called to McKenzie. But she couldn’t hear me over the rocket that whistled as it flew into the air, then exploded. I crawled across the towel, behind Janine. She was texting.

  “Coming through,” I announced, purposely pushing her roughly. Lying on my stomach, half on the towel, half in the sand, I lifted the lid on the cooler at Lilly’s feet. I couldn’t quite get my hand up and over the top.

  “Need a beer?” Lilly asked, looking down at me over her pretty nose.

  “Two,” I said, holding up two fingers.

  She frowned, but she passed me one and then another.

  “Thanks.” I flashed her my best smile.

  She laughed, shook her head at me, “the incorrigible Aurora,” and gazed up into the sky again. “Oh,” she breathed. “That was beautiful. That might have been my favorite. Which do you like best, Maura?”

  “The ones that twinkle,
” she said over her shoulder from where she sat on a towel.

  “Those are mine,” McKenzie said.

  “See, Mom, we agree on something.” Maura again.

  “How about you, Mia?”

  Mia glanced back at Lilly. “Oh, I couldn’t choose. I love them all.”

  I crawled back to my spot beside Janine. “Beer?” I offered.

  She shook her head.

  “Who are you sexting?” I didn’t try to look over her shoulder. I laid one beer beside me on the towel and opened the other.

  “The department of—”

  “None of your damned business,” I chimed in. It was something we used to say when we were in middle school. We both laughed.

  I took a drink of the cold beer and gazed out at the water. I would swim tonight. Day swimming didn’t count. I could hear the depths calling me. The dark, cold water. Then I heard Maura saying something to me and I came back to the land of the living.

  18

  McKenzie

  Friday, my chest felt a little tight and I was slightly nauseated when I woke. The good news was that the rash on my hands and feet looked better and they weren’t as sore. Checking out my stubbly eyebrows in the mirror while I brushed my teeth, I tried to assess how I was feeling. Was my breathing better? It certainly wasn’t in the middle of the night when I was puking, but this morning . . . I took a deep breath, then spit in the sink. I felt like I could breathe deeper. Maybe. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking. I hadn’t needed the oxygen I’d brought with me, so far. That had to be a positive sign, didn’t it?

  I rinsed out my mouth, dropped my toothbrush into the holder on the sink, and pulled my terry turban off. My head looked red this morning, rather than flesh-colored. A peach fuzz of red over the whole thing—except for a patch over my right eye, which was still cucumber bald. I looked awful. My face was blotchy. I had no eyebrows. Almost no hair.

  But I had my daughters. I had my friends. And I was still here. I smiled at myself, pulled the turban over my head, and went to get dressed for the day.

  We lay on the beach in the morning, before it got too hot. The Weather Channel had predicted a high of ninety-four degrees, with seventy-three percent humidity. Too hot on the beach for cancer girls and pregnant girls alike. By lunch, we were all ready to go up to the house. In the afternoon, Janine had a mysterious errand to run, which I suspected involved her girlfriend. Lilly and I spent the afternoon watching movies on DVD. (Thelma & Louise and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Easy to guess who chose which movie.) Aurora went back to the beach to nap; she was impervious to the heat.

  That evening, after dinner, we sat in the living room and played spades. My choice. (Lilly had tried to convince us to play Clue; she loves that game. But she would have to wait until it was her turn to choose.) Aurora and I were partners, against Janine and Lilly. Taking a leaf out, we played at the table where we ate in the living room.

  “Your bid, Lilly.” Aurora sipped a gin and tonic. It was her second since dinner. She’d had at least one while we heated up Fourth of July leftovers. “Today, sweetie.”

  Lilly, refusing to be hurried along, studied her hand before gazing up at us over the tops of her cards. We were playing with two dog-eared decks advertising Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville restaurant in New Orleans. I wasn’t even sure which one of us had bought the cards; we’d all gone on a girls’ weekend when Mia and Maura were in the sixth grade. “Five for me, plus Janine’s three. Eight for us.” Lilly smiled with triumph.

  Aurora looked at me across the table from her. “We’re going to lose. Three for us.”

  I tugged on my ball cap. It was more comfortable to wear than the scarves that constantly needed adjusting. “We’re not going to lose.” I wrote down our bids. “We’re going to set them.”

  “Not with this hand we’re not.” Aurora gave her pile of cards, facedown on the table, a tap and reached for her sweaty glass.

  Janine played her first card. An ace of hearts. “Dinner was good, Lilly. Thanks.”

  “Just leftovers.” Lilly waited for me to toss down my three before she added a four to the center of the table. “Mr. Greene’s pulled pork was delicious, though.”

  Aurora picked up her cards and tossed a ten in. “Sympathy pork.”

  “Come again?” Janine scooped up the trick.

  “Sympathy pork,” Aurora said again. She waited until everyone had put in a card and Janine had picked up her second winning trick. Hearts again. “It’s sympathy pork. He sent it over because he feels bad for McKenzie. The cancer.” She did the quotations thing with her fingers.

  “I’ll take sympathy pork anytime.” I sipped my one and only glass of pinot of the evening. “If it’s that good. I mean, if it had just been boring, dry pork chops, maybe I would feel differently. Pulled pork is one of those things that smells as good cooking as it tastes when you eat it. I love it when Mr. Greene smokes meat on his deck.”

  “I’m surprised there’s not some ordinance against it. Some people don’t like to smell smoking meat while they’re sitting on the deck of their beach house.” Lilly. “I think it was nice of them to send it over, though. You make it sound so cold, Aurora. The Greenes were trying to be neighborly. When something like this happens, people want to help and they don’t know how.” She shrugged. “So they send food.”

  “If I get cancer,” Aurora told us, “I want sympathy gin. Fifths of sympathy gin. And dark chocolate. German if they can find it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Lilly said. “Janine.”

  Janine played the first card of the next hand.

  Someone’s cell phone vibrated, and I glanced at mine, lying on the table to the left of my wineglass. I was hoping one of my girls had texted me. I love it when they text me just to tell me something silly that’s happened. My favorite is when they send me selfies, where they’re making silly faces. The screen on my phone was dark. It was Janine’s vibrating. She picked it up, read the text, smiled, and tossed out another card. A club. She texted back.

  Clubs went around a second time, Lilly winning both hands. Janine’s cell vibrated again. Again, she smiled, texted back, and collected her partner’s winning hand.

  “Chris?” I asked. I was as curious as Lilly; I was just better at not acting like it.

  She nodded. I finally took a trick with my one and only ace, an ace of diamonds.

  “Care to share?” Aurora asked Janine.

  Janine picked up her beer. She wasn’t drinking hard liquor tonight, which was a nice change. “Nope.”

  “Oh, come on.” Aurora slid her hand across the table toward Janine’s phone.

  “You’re aware I have a license to carry a concealed weapon,” Janine warned in her cop voice. She didn’t move a muscle, just eyed Aurora.

  Aurora withdrew her hand. “Well, I’m the only one in the room who’s ever killed anyone, so there’s that.”

  I looked up at her, knitting my sketched-in brows. “Aurora,” I chastised. What I was selfishly thinking was Really? You couldn’t just let us have a fun, boring evening without having to drag out our dirty laundry?

  “What?” Aurora opened her arms, cards in one hand. “You know you were thinking it. All three of you. Be honest. You think about it all the time. Whenever you cross me.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I was not,” Janine said, fanning her cards open. “I do not.”

  Everyone was quiet as we played the next hand.

  “Great,” Aurora said as she picked up the cards. “So now you guys are all going to be pissy with me because I mentioned the elephant in the room?” She rocked back in her chair, shifting her gaze from one of us to the next. “The elephant we drag from room to room. Place to place, even when we’re not here? When we’re not even together?”

  “We’re not going to do this tonight, are we?” Lilly voiced what I had been thinking. She sounded tired, not angry.

  Aurora spun her glass, watching the ice cubes go in a circle. “I told the girls, McKenzie.”

&n
bsp; It took me a second to realize what she was talking about. Then I just sat there, stunned. “You told them?” I finally managed. As the words came out of my mouth, I realized that was what they had been talking about the previous night on the beach, when I interrupted them. My intuition had been right. I knew something was going on.

  “I’m going to need another beer.” Janine got up. “Anyone else?”

  I eyed my wineglass, seriously considering telling her to just bring the bottle. I couldn’t believe that Aurora had told my girls about what she’d done. About Buddy. I had wanted to tell them myself. When the time came.

  That was a lie. At least a half lie. If I’d really wanted to tell them myself, I’d have told them before now, wouldn’t I?

  “I’ll take another bottle of water.” Lilly got up, raising her finger to us. “Hold the conversation. I have to pee.”

  Aurora drained her glass and slid it across the table toward Janine. “Another gin and tonic if you’re making them.”

  “I’m not.” Janine leaned over my shoulder. “Need anything?”

  I shook my head. I sat there across from Aurora, her looking at me, me looking at her.

  “I’m sorry, okay?” Aurora finally said. She opened her hands and let them fall to her lap. “They looked me up on Wikipedia.”

  “Wikipedia?” I asked, surprised that was how they had found out, then surprised Maura and Mia hadn’t thought of it sooner. Or none of us had.

  I got up and went to my bedroom, bringing my laptop back and dragging a quilted throw. I was cold. In my chair again, I wrapped the blanket around me and Googled Aurora Boudreaux. There were hundreds of results, of course, mostly art sites, but also museums and cities where her work was displayed. Apparently, the Rhode Island School of Design was offering a class featuring Aurora, along with several other modern artists. I clicked the Wikipedia listing.

  Janine came back in with her beer and Lilly’s water, texting.

  “I can’t believe you wouldn’t make me another drink,” Aurora said, sounding genuinely hurt.

  “My gift to your liver.” Janine took her seat, setting her cell on the table.