As Close as Sisters

by Colleen Faulkner

  “We could go to a bar,” Aurora piped up. “Bars are air-conditioned.” But she was already holding the door open to the ice-cream shop.

  When we were all inside, my cancery lungs gave a sigh of relief. I was impressed with myself, though. I’d almost kept up with Lilly all the way across the parking lot. Maybe the experimental drug was working. I wasn’t sucking wind like I should have been. Or maybe, just maybe, there had been a mistake in my diagnosis. Maybe I wasn’t dying of papillary thyroid cancer in my lungs after all.

  And maybe this was a shop that sold unicorn rides rather than low-cal frozen yogurt.

  I half sat, half fell into a white wrought iron chair at a round table by the window.

  “I don’t want frozen yogurt,” Lilly protested, but she sat down. She took off her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes. They were red from crying, and her mascara had smudged under one eye.

  “What does everyone want?” Janine asked.

  My stomach was a little upset now. I didn’t really want anything, but for the sake of the group . . . “A single scoop of sorbet and some water.”

  “What kind of sorbet?” Janine asked me. I knew she’d taken notice of my breathiness. She was looking at me, asking me “Are you okay?” with her eyes.

  I nodded ever so slightly. I’m okay. “Any kind of sorbet,” I told her. “Whatever is the flavor of the day.”

  “I know what Lilly wants,” Aurora said, going with Janine.

  Lilly sat back in her chair, her big belly pressing against the table. “I can’t believe Aurora knows what I get. We haven’t been here since last fall.”

  I waited until they were out of earshot. “So what’s going on with Matt? I thought things were fine.”

  “They were.” She pulled a tissue from her bag and wiped under both eyes. “When I left he was all lovey-dovey, saying he’d miss me and that he’d have to come visit because there was no way he could go a month without seeing me.” She exhaled. “But he’s been acting weird all weekend.” She looked at Aurora and Janine in line to order.

  They were talking quietly. Whether it was about Lilly or Kathy or the kid behind the counter with the bad tattoo on his neck, I couldn’t tell.

  “Of course Aurora remembers what you like,” I told Lilly softly.

  “There are a lot people in here for three o’clock in the afternoon,” she mused.

  I glanced around. It didn’t seem any more or less busy than usual. A teenage girl and guy, clearly on a date, watched as one of the employees, wearing a paper hat, scooped frozen yogurt into a waffle cone. To our left, two tables over, were a little girl and her mother, and her mother, I guessed. A middle-aged couple, a little older than us, was sharing a sundae and engrossed in conversation.

  “I really do feel like an idiot. I thought Janine was asking me about what you and I talked about, about me telling Matt. I know. How paranoid does that make me?” Lilly took lipstick from her bag. Even in her hurry to get out of the car, to get away from us, she remembered to bring her bag. So she could have her lipstick. She put it on her lips, then blotted it with a tissue the way my mother did. “What was she asking?”

  “I think about Matt. What was going on with you two because you were texting back and forth. She was just joking around.”

  Janine and Aurora were next in line. I reached across the table. “You don’t have to tell them about your stripping days.”

  She made a face. “They know about the stripping. Aurora always thought it was funny. She said I was probably bad at it, which I was not.” Lilly had gone to the University of Miami for two years, years we didn’t see much of her.

  “What I mean is that you don’t have to tell them the rest.”

  “I do. I was a prostitute, for God’s sake.”

  I scowled. “You were not.”

  “I took money for sex,” Lilly whispered, leaning closer.

  I rolled my eyes. “We already talked about this. Sweetie, we’ve all exchanged things for sex. If not money, then favors, or a pretty piece of jewelry, or just some peace and quiet so we could go back to reading a book.” I took a breath. “That is old news. Old news that you don’t have to tell Aurora or Janine or Matt about.”

  Lilly squeezed her eyes closed. “What you’re saying makes sense. I know it makes perfectly logical sense.” She opened her eyes. “It’s what I would tell you.”

  I smiled, hoping Lilly knew how much I loved her.

  “You’re right.” She regarded me from across the table. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to throw a snit. I just—I’m worried about Matt. What if that hussy with the fake boobies and the really white teeth has been into our office? I knew I should have called her company and told them to send us a different rep. I knew it!”

  I would have laughed at Lilly using the word boobies, except that I wasn’t sure I had enough breath, and she was too upset to be laughing at her. “Tell me what’s going on. How is Matt being weird?”

  She was halfway through her story about playing phone tag with Matt when Aurora and Janine returned with paper cups of iced water for everyone and frozen yogurt for them, watermelon sorbet for me. Aurora had gotten a cone of soft-serve with rainbow sprinkles on it. Janine had a scoop of coffee yogurt with chocolate chips on top, and they’d brought Lilly her Miss Lulu, a fruity version of a hot chocolate sundae.

  “Eat some. You’ll feel better,” Aurora said, putting the big cup of frozen yogurt with its assorted gooey fruit chunks and syrups in front of her. She handed her a long-handled plastic spoon. “Then you have to tell us what the big secret is.”

  I cut my eyes at Aurora. I was feeling better now that I had caught my breath. The sorbet actually looked good. “She’s worried about Matt. He’s been preoccupied all week. Not returning her phone calls—”

  “He does eventually,” Lilly interrupted, “but he’s distracted. He’s not really listening to me. He just says what he thinks I want to hear. Lots of mmm-hmms.”

  “Maybe he’s just having a bad week at work.” Janine took one of the chairs between Lilly and me. “If I’m having a bad week at work, Chris can forget it. I can barely hold up my half of a conversation. I can’t,” she admitted. “It’s not that Chris isn’t important, it’s just that . . . work is everything. It’s how I judge myself, you know?”

  Aurora had taken the chair on the other side of me, between Lilly and me. We all scooted up to the cute, round, white wrought iron table. “That’s a guy thing,” Aurora said. “And a Janine thing,” she quickly added.

  “Some woman has been flirting with Matt when she comes into the office,” I explained so Lilly could get another bite of her pineapple yogurt with blueberry topping. “Matt said he hadn’t even noticed her when Lilly brought up the subject, but Lilly knows the woman’s got her eye on him.”

  “So was she there this week?” Aurora licked sprinkles off her ice-cream cone.

  “I don’t know. She wasn’t supposed to be, but . . .” Lilly pushed the spoon into her mouth. “Matt says there’s nothing wrong, that he’s just preoccupied. He had a heavy patient schedule all week. The bookkeeper messed something up on our unemployment taxes, and I guess his mother has been calling about coming to stay with us after the baby is born.”

  “His mother wants to stay with you?” Janine started to pluck napkins from the little aluminum dispenser on the table next to us and pass them out. “I didn’t realize you and his mom had that kind of relationship.” She made a face. “I didn’t think Matt and his mom had that kind of relationship. Isn’t she a professional golfer or something? I thought she lived in Arizona.”

  “Not a professional golfer. She’s on some kind of national senior citizen ladies’ team,” Lilly explained. She took another bite of her sundae. “Matt’s overreacting. She’s just trying to be nice. You know. Since my mother’s dead. She thought I would want her to come.”

  “You don’t though, right?” Janine gave Lilly a napkin and touched her own chin.

  Lilly quickly wiped her mo
uth. “No, I don’t want her there. Of course I want her to come see the baby. But not right after we have her. I want some time for Matt and the baby and me to adjust. But I don’t see why Matt can’t just tell her that.”

  “Wait a minute. Did I miss something?” Aurora asked, reaching for the napkin Janine had put in front of her. “Are you having a girl? How did I not know that? No one ever tells me anything.”

  “We tell you things all the time.” Janine. “You don’t listen, Aurora.”

  “I’m not having a girl,” Lilly explained. “Well, obviously I might be.” She gave a little laugh. “I just call it she.” She stroked her belly with her free hand. “Because it’s easier than he/she. Him/her. But we don’t know it’s a she for sure.”

  “Ah.” Aurora nodded. “So back to Matt. You think he’s hiding something?” She’d worn her hair down rather than in a ponytail, and it shimmered over her shoulders and down her back. “But you don’t know what?”

  Lilly dropped her spoon into her polka-dot sundae cup. “No . . . I don’t know. He just seems . . .” She exhaled and dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin.

  “Could he really just be preoccupied with having to tell his mother to get lost and having to pay the government a big penalty because someone screwed up his payroll?” I asked. “Which is what he told you?”

  “I don’t know.” Lilly sat back in her wrought iron chair. “Maybe.”

  “Boys and their mothers,” Janine commiserated.

  “Not just boys. My sister is like that,” I said, taking a tiny bite of the sorbet and letting it melt on my tongue. “She hates to tell my mother no, no matter how crazy my mother’s ideas are.”

  “And the nonpayment and the penalty is a big deal,” Lilly agreed. “It’s something Matt really would get upset about. And he didn’t even want to tell me about it, to begin with. He didn’t want to worry me.” She stared into her cup of frozen yogurt that was beginning to melt. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m making something out of nothing.”

  “Which brings us to the next topic, or rather back to the previous one.” Aurora took a bite of her cone. “What wasn’t McKenzie supposed to tell us? That she didn’t tell us, but now you have to, because you told on yourself.”

  I licked sorbet off my spoon. “Let it go.”

  Janine narrowed her gaze. “Big life-changing secret or just some little thing you should have told us fifteen years ago and now you’ve blown it up to be something big in your head?” she asked Lilly.

  “Big thing,” Lilly said.

  “Little,” I said at exactly the same time.

  Aurora and Janine looked at me and then at Lilly.

  “You wanna table it?” Aurora asked, taking me totally by surprise.

  “Can I?” Lilly asked, almost in a whisper. “Aurora, that’s so nice of you.”

  Aurora shrugged. “Not really. My guess is that it probably isn’t as big a deal as you think.” She took another bite of her ice-cream cone. “So you think on that.” She turned to me. “And in the meantime, tell us how pizza was at Grottos with your girls. They ask you all the gruesome details of Buddy’s demise? This guy I once knew wanted to do some kind of crazy calculation with blood volume from the crime photos. Needless to say”—she smiled her “gorgeous blonde” smile—“I didn’t go out with him again.”

  22

  Janine

  Monday morning I woke up nervous as hell. I wished I were anywhere but here at the beach house. Waiting. Having everyone watching me, then pretending they aren’t when I look at them.

  I’d told them all the night before that I didn’t want to be grilled about the visit today. I’d promised not to provide details (beyond the fact that it was not my mother coming), so I wouldn’t be providing details. Lilly wanted to make some sort of celebratory dinner involving boneless chicken breasts, artichokes, and brie; I warned her not to. I was pretty sure our “guest,” as Lilly kept saying, wouldn’t be staying for dinner and aperitifs in the conservatory.

  But Lilly wouldn’t listen to me. She went on a tear, cleaning the house. I told her it wasn’t necessary. She did it anyway. There had been no stopping Lilly and her nesting before she became pregnant. Now . . . I sure wasn’t going to take her on.

  So I watched for a while as she buzzed around the house vacuuming and dusting. I shot the breeze with McKenzie on the front deck. Aurora finally graced us with her presence after sleeping in until ten thirty, and she and I got into a serious discussion, bordering on an argument, as to what was the best cheap beer. She insisted it was Lone Star. My vote was for PBR. Pabst Blue Ribbon.

  Starting to feel nervous about the lightning that was about to strike, I tried to keep myself busy. I took out the recycling. I fixed the float in the toilet tank downstairs, which Aurora insisted was Lilly’s fault because she was using it so much. McKenzie recorded Lilly pulling her maternity shorts down to show us a cute butt cheek and telling Aurora to kiss it. Then McKenzie replayed it for us three times, and we all, including Lilly, laughed so hard that Lilly had to run to the bathroom again.

  I was so desperate to keep busy, to keep from being nervous, that I got out the old electric lawn mower and mowed our postage-stamp-sized back lawn. Mr. Greene usually took care of it. He had a riding mower to mow his postage stamp. I mowed ours, and then his, just because with the mower running, I couldn’t hear Lilly, Aurora, and McKenzie talking about my love life as if I weren’t even there.

  They were scheming. Conjecturing. Even Aurora, which surprised me because she rarely fell into gossipy-female mode the way McKenzie and Lilly could. Someone brought up marriage, and Lilly took that and ran with it; I was pretty sure I heard her planning a reception in the Hotel du Pont’s Gold Ballroom.

  That was when I decided to take Fritz for a run in Cape Henlopen State Park. I had time before our guest arrived. Fritz and I went to the park all the time, year-round. It’s a good place for both of us to blow off steam. He’s required to be on a leash, but when we got on the trail in the pines, if the place wasn’t busy, I let him run off leash.

  I ran his legs off and mine.

  It felt good to push myself. To clear my mind of a tangle of anxieties. About a year ago, I figured out that I didn’t need Zoloft if I ran fifteen miles a week. I’m not sure if it’s the physical exercise or the opportunity to be alone with my thoughts that calms me. I don’t care. Running makes me feel good. Zoloft doesn’t.

  After a mile and a half, I slowed my pace and began to systematically tackle my problems of the day. Right away, I decided I wasn’t going to think about what was going to happen this afternoon. It didn’t make sense to worry about all the ways the shit might hit the fan. I’d just wait to see what happened and then stress over it.

  McKenzie was, of course, right on the top of my list of things I needed to worry about. I’d miscalculated with Mack. I’d had ideas, before we all came to Albany Beach, ideas about how this last time together was going to go. I thought that if we had this time together to prepare ourselves, prepare myself for her death, I’d be okay. I had it all wrong. I’d miscalculated, misconstrued, misjudged.

  After a week with McKenzie, I felt as if it was going to be harder to say good-bye, not easier. Somehow, I’d gotten the idea in my head that if we could all be together, if we could talk about the shit we needed to talk about, that I’d be able to distance myself a little from McKenzie. Maybe distance wasn’t the right word. I didn’t want to distance myself so much as insulate myself. I didn’t want to separate myself from her physically or emotionally, but I had to know I could let go, right? I had to know that I could literally survive without her.

  This morning, watching McKenzie record Aurora plucking her eyebrows on the front porch, I felt like my heart would just shrivel and die. Or maybe explode. It actually physically hurts to watch Mack. People always talk about heartbreak, but because I’d been to Afghanistan, I tend to see life as something that ends with an explosion and the flying apart of body pieces, rather than just a spl
itting in two.

  There was no way I was going to be able to live after McKenzie died. Maybe I’d explode right there at the funeral. The idea, in a freakish way, kind of intrigued me. How would my mother feel then? Would she be relieved I was dead? No longer around to remind her of how she failed her daughter in the greatest way a mother could fail her child? Or would she mourn the loss? Would her heart be at risk of shattering into a million raw pieces?

  Fritz and I circled a copse of pine trees. There were no rocks, but the area reminded me of northern Afghanistan. The memories flood back every time I run this route. Americans think about Afghanistan as being a big desert, and part of it is. But up north, it’s mountainous, rocky, and covered in evergreens and undergrowth.

  Breathing hard, I pushed for the next mile marker on the trail. Fritz stayed ahead of me. Encouraging me, staying with me, even when his natural instinct was to run ahead.

  As I pumped my arms and legs, I moved on to door/crisis number two: the lawsuit against me. For weeks, I’d been going over the whole thing in my mind, wondering if there was some way that I could have produced a different outcome. When I caught the public nuisance on the beach, I hadn’t been adequately forewarned by dispatch. To be fair, a teenage lifeguard had called it in. Dispatch didn’t have enough information. How could the lifeguard have predicted when he called 911 how quickly the incident would escalate?

  And he wasn’t trained in crowd control, but I was. Why hadn’t I seen the signs the minute I came over the dunes?

  The thing was, I had. I called for backup before my newbie partner and I had walked down to the water to look into the call. In my first interview, after the incident, I’d been asked by my lieutenant why my partner and I didn’t wait for backup before going down on the beach. I couldn’t have done that because the skinny kid-lifeguard was down there trying keep the incident from escalating. I had a duty to that kid. Before my duty to my partner and me.