“Sorry. I was in the bathroom. You should have called.”
“I don’t have your number.” Her hair was black. Her eyes were large and heavy-lidded under thick brows. “I only know the address because Clayton used to live here.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
“I was driving by.” She made a move to stand.
“Can I help you?”
She slid forward until she was lying on her back. “I’m fine, I do this every day,” she said and turned on her side and raised herself to her hands and knees. A long, narrow ponytail like an extension cord hung over her shoulder. She lifted her hands and went into a squat. She adjusted her stance.
All this activity was making Harriet uncomfortable. “Did you come for the baby clothes?” she asked. “I was going to bring them to work on Monday. Is David in on Monday? Well, it doesn’t matter, I can leave them in his office. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Lesley pushed off from her knees, and then she was standing. “Going down,” she panted, “is not a problem.”
“Come in. Please.”
“Let me catch my breath.” She was as slight as Harriet but differently slight: unmuscled, soft. Her arms, now that they were out of service, hung from her sleeveless sundress. She shuffled through the open door and headed for the living room. “I’d kill for a glass of water. Sparkling, if you have it.”
“I have Perrier. With ice?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
In the kitchen Harriet’s composure faltered. She tipped the bottle too far forward, and water galloped out and missed the glass. She relit her cigarette, took a deep drag, extinguished it.
Lesley had chosen a wingback chair between pillars of cardboard boxes. She looked enthroned, a fertility goddess. “I remember your place on Glen Manor,” she said, accepting her drink. “You hosted a launch for like two hundred people.”
“That must have been, what, five years ago?”
“Anyway, about the baby clothes.”
“Right. So, there’s everything. Booties, sleepers, dresses, little shirts and pants.”
“How old are your friend’s kids?”
“Old now, in their late teens.”
“Why did she save their clothes?”
“She’s a pack rat, but she’s downsizing into a condo, so. They’re in excellent condition. I could get them now if you want. Did you drive?”
Lesley was gulping her drink. She drained the glass. “I perspire gallons,” she said.
“Would you like a refill?”
“No, thanks.” She chewed a piece of ice. “The thing is,” she said, “we don’t need more clothes.”
“Oh, you don’t?”
“I’ve had three baby showers.”
Harriet was uneasy. She perched on the edge of the sofa. “David didn’t say.”
“I guess he wanted to include you somehow. And you wanted to give me something so you wouldn’t feel so guilty.”
“Sorry?”
“About the affair.” She spoke plainly, almost sympathetically. “Is he here? I thought I heard something.”
“No,” she said. But Harriet was stunned. She was beaten. “Yes,” she said dimly.
“He’s here.”
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s leave him where he is for the moment.”
“Lesley, listen I—”
“If you don’t mind, Harriet, I’d like you to listen. First, I’m not leaving him. If he leaves me, that’s his choice. Second, I think you should know you aren’t—”
A cough that started in Harriet’s throat ended in Rose’s. She was hunched over her desk, still gripping the padded hanger. She was crying. She put the hanger on the phone book and gazed around to establish her surroundings: the Wall of Stars, the sofa, the DVDs. She felt as if she’d been in Harriet for a month.
I think you should know you aren’t what? The first? Perhaps David was a habitual philanderer, and Lesley’s message was, “You’re one in a long line.” This would help explain her saintly calm.
But the really startling thing for Rose was the revelation of how much Ava and Harriet were alike, especially their eyes. Of all the people in the world, was Harriet the person Rose entered because of her eyes?
She went to the sofa and lay down and surrendered to thinking about her sister deliberately and fully, as she’d spent the past twenty-three years trying not to think about her. She let images of Ava enter her body and leave, enter and leave. At one particular image she paused: Ava holding a jigsaw-puzzle piece between her thumb and forefinger, the other fingers lifted, her features skewered with a misgiving that reminded Rose of Harriet looking up from the sink.
Had Harriet looked up at Rose’s urging? Was Rose getting through to her? Later, with David, Harriet had said, “I’ve developed this fear of flying, of being crammed in.” God, what if Rose was getting through to her so deeply she was introducing Ava’s neuroses?
She wondered about her own mind, then, whether it entered the episodes unscathed or, the opposite, whether it carried off something precious: maternal instinct, for example. She had yet to feel the fetus move, but then she probably wouldn’t—that is to say, Harriet wouldn’t—this early on. Rose had certainly felt everything else. The orgasm. Although had she felt the orgasm? On her own, here in her chair? Was the husk of her body able to feel anything?
She looked at her watch. One thirty-five. David would have been called into the discussion by now. She could just see him standing between Harriet and Lesley, sheepish, turning his ball cap in his hands. Regardless of what he said, Rose felt sure that, for Harriet, the affair was over. The scene itself might be over, David and Lesley gone, Harriet alone. Call someone, Rose thought, hoping to transmit if not the words, then the impulse. Her eyes were blinking shut. She was very tired.
Call your sister, she thought. Or Marsh. Call Marsh. Marry Marsh. He loves you.
When Fiona didn’t answer the phone, Rose presumed she’d already left. Either that or she’d forgotten about the grocery shopping and was still gardening. Now, a third possibility presented itself: Fiona on the front porch, annoyed, tapping her watch.
“I lost track of the time,” Rose said, winded. She’d run most of the way.
Fiona came to her feet. “Ava, darling, is that you?” she said in her brogue.
Rose stopped. “It’s Rose.”
“Who?”
“Rose.”
“Where’s Ava?”
Was some Ava-like aspect clinging to her? “There’s only me, Mom.”
“Why do you call me Mom?”
“I’m your other daughter. Rose. You gave birth to me in 1971.”
“That date means nothing to me,” Fiona said. But her face cleared, and in her normal voice she said, “We’re late,” and moved decisively down the steps to the driver’s side of the car.
“Mom, I’ll drive.”
“I’m driving, I can drive.”
“Your glasses.”
“Oh, yes, where are they?”
“Around your neck.”
Before Rose had her seat belt on, they were reversing at high speed. “Slow down,” Rose said. They bolted across the street. “Brake!” she cried. The car bumped over the curb. “Push right to the floor!” she cried, and Fiona did, although too late for Caroline’s ornamental juniper.
In the ensuing silence Fiona’s breath whistled.
“Turn off the engine,” Rose said.
Fiona turned it off.
“Get out of the car. Leave the keys.”
Fiona obeyed. Rose climbed out and inspected the bumper. Among the old scratches and dents, any fresh damage was camouflaged. She got back in, drove onto the road, and parked.
“We’ll replace it!” she called to Charles, who was making his deliberate, erect way down the lawn. The tree was basically a narrow trunk supporting an oversized globe of foliage. It had always looked as if it might keel over, and now it had.
“Mrs. Bowan,” Charles said to Fiona in the dulcet voice
that must have found favor with the officials he once squired around Mombasa, “assure me that you are not hurt.”
“We just had the engine overhauled,” Fiona said.
“Ah! Mechanical failure.”
“The car’s fine,” said Rose. “And we’re fine, thanks. But the poor tree.”
“Junipers never flourish in direct sunlight,” Fiona said. “I told Caroline that the day she bought it.”
Charles bent over, clutching his thighs and in so doing betraying them to be gaunt under the generous drape of his trousers. He lifted the trunk and tottered. Rose reached to help, but he clasped the tree possessively and after a few rickety steps brought it upright.
“Now then,” he said.
“Did Caroline get it from Sheridan’s?” Rose asked.
He didn’t seem to hear.
“I’ll ask her,” Rose said. To her mother she said, “We can buy another one tomorrow.”
“What will that set us back?” Fiona wanted to know.
“My dear ladies,” Charles intervened, “I believe we have reason to hope. Take it, Rose, if you would.” And he relinquished the tree and walked to the side door of his house and went in.
“Where’s he going?” said Fiona.
“To get something,” Rose said irritably. Her mother wasn’t cheap, but at times like this Rose had to wonder. Maybe she was cheap, she’d always been cheap, and now that her surface graces were beginning to wear thin, her essential cheapness was shining through.
Charles returned with duct tape, a ball of green string, a pair of scissors, and a broom handle.
“We were hoping to get the shopping done,” Fiona said.
Charles dropped the tape, string, and scissors. “This will be quick,” he said and moved up against the base of the tree. He raised the broom handle high, staggered backward, and thrust it into the earth.
The taping of the gash and the tying of the sapling he entrusted to Rose, under his supervision. He said that the arthritis in his fingers had progressed to the point where he could no longer tie a knot. He held them out, and they were like antlers. “Otherwise,” he said, addressing Fiona, “I’m as fit as a fiddle.”
“If this doesn’t work, we’ll replace it,” Rose said yet again.
He turned to her. His bloodshot eyes were the oldest living things she’d ever seen. “Let us think positively,” he said.
In the car (Rose at the wheel, no argument), Fiona took issue with his fit-as-a-fiddle remark. “What do I care? Anyway, you don’t have to be Superman to shove a pole into a wet lawn.”
Rose stirred herself to say, “He shoved it pretty far down.” She was brooding over Harriet. She was thinking that Harriet would be leaning toward abortion more than ever, and that she must have gotten those baby clothes from her friend before she found out about her own pregnancy. Well, they’re yours now, Rose thought, as though a bunch of sleepers and booties and little shirts might make a difference. In theory, Rose stood by a woman’s dominion over her body. So why did she have this devouring need for Harriet to keep the baby? Because it was as if Ava were pregnant? Because the baby might have Ava’s eyes?
“It won’t live,” said Fiona.
Rose looked over wildly. “What?”
“The tree. It’s a goner.”
After putting the groceries away, they drove to the theater. Fiona decided to start her annual cleaning of the seat arms, and she entered the auditorium with her dustcloths and lemon oil. Rose escaped upstairs with a box of Smarties. For what felt like the hundredth time she checked that no more storms were expected before tomorrow.
She opened the windows. She lit a cigarette. I’ve got to work, I’m falling behind, she thought. She never fell behind, it wasn’t like her, not the old her, anyway. She listened to phone messages and read comments on the Regal’s website. Most of the comments were reviews and didn’t require her to weigh in, but she did. It was the sort of thing she could do in her sleep. Everybody was so friendly and knowledgeable. Except—who was this guy? ReelMan9. ReelMan9 was bawling her out for showing tonight’s first feature, Easy Rider, during Henry Fonda week. “Peter is not Henry,” he bristled.
“He isn’t?” she muttered. What she typed, copying a paragraph from the Regal’s mission statement, was, “The challenge of featuring an artist a week is that fourteen different movies are too many for even the greatest actors to carry. Our solution is to spice things up with compatible classics.” To this she added, “Easy Rider and The Grapes of Wrath work well together, I think: the Fondas, the road trips through the southwestern US, the condemnations of the American Dream.”
She gnawed on her thumb. She was in the grip of a savage oral craving, and neither the cigarettes nor the Smarties were satisfying it. She decided to set ReelMan9 even straighter: “Many of our double bills were paired by my father. His programming was gutsy, original, and often just plain whimsical. The reason he paired It’s a Wonderful Life with The Party was that in both movies there are retractable swimming pools. Or take this Sunday’s double bill, The Seven Year Itch and Rear Window. Aside from the similarities of period (mid-1950s), location (Lower Manhattan), weather (heat wave), and plot driver (middle-aged professional white male obsesses over neighbor), both are set in apartments improbably humble for the kinds of salaries a world-famous photojournalist and a successful book editor would have earned back then. I will be writing more about his programming in a future issue of Coming Attractions.”
Feeling better now, soothed by her mental vacation from Harriet, she reached for the Smarties. The box was empty. She contemplated getting another, but she could smell lasagna warming in the microwave.
Lloyd was seated at the table, and he and Fiona were discussing dance crazes. For the sake of coming across as somebody not having an affair, Rose let her mother drop a brick-sized slab of lasagna on her plate. Fiona said, “I can do the twist, I used to do the twist all the time.” She put down the spatula and demonstrated. She was all elbows and enthusiasm. Lloyd laughed and sang the let’s-do-the-twist song in his gravelly bass.
Don’t kill yourself, Rose begged Harriet, thinking how Harriet had only just started taking her antidepressants, if she’d started at all. Don’t kill your baby.
SEPTEMBER 1982–JUNE 1999
Ava’s papier-mâché parrot, Tobikumu, gazed sightlessly toward the window. He had been a Christmas present from a great-uncle who had lived for several years in Tokyo. Rose had gotten Kazuyuki, a delicate papier-mâché cellist with elongated fingers resting on fine strings that might have been dental floss. One day she’d taken him to the house of a new Japanese friend, and there, within five minutes, the friend’s poodle had torn him to confetti.
Under Ava’s care, Tobikumu, the parrot, stayed perfect. Under Rose’s, he lost his glass eyes. She put him on her bedside table so that before falling asleep she could look at his sockets and recover the guilt she’d shed during the day, in those moments when she’d been lighthearted or animated or—the most bewildering offense—pleased with herself. She thought of the guilt as survivor’s guilt, and of survivor’s guilt as a guilt necessary for survival. Tobikumu was her victim and accuser both. She counted on him to get her to cry herself to sleep.
She cried secretly, in near silence. Still, her parents saw her misery and sent her to a child psychologist, an old woman who was half deaf and therefore needed to sit next to Rose on the sofa. Rose didn’t mind. Dr. Grewal’s baked-bread grandmotherly smell and her cracked brown face like dried mud were unthreatening and a little heartbreaking. She spoke in a soft, accented voice. She had a tendency to repeat Rose’s answers, for both their sakes, Rose understood, in order that Rose might hear them said back to her, and that Dr. Grewal might verify she’d heard them correctly. Rose never mentioned Tobikumu, and when the subject came around to Ava, she said what any normal girl getting better would say: Yes, I’m still sad. No, not as sad as I was. Yes, I understand it wasn’t my fault. Mostly they dwelt on Rose’s present circumstances, her friends and school,
her shyness. To distract Dr. Grewal from asking about Ava, Rose made her shyness sound like a more serious problem than it was. Year after year, as Dr. Grewal’s deafness worsened and she sat ever closer, Rose offered up the minor troubles and triumphs of her week.
She would have continued with the therapy indefinitely, but Dr. Grewal retired. This was around the time of Rose’s sixteenth birthday and another change in her life: the birth control pill, which she began taking for her period cramps and which had the unexpected side effects of clearing up her acne and enlarging her already large breasts.
Boys at school and men in trucks gave her second looks. She hated this kind of attention, it drove her to walk around hunched and hugging herself. So badly did she want to blend in, however, to escape from the conspicuous clump of girls who had no hope of finding a boyfriend into the wider, less glaring company of those who at least stood a chance, she went out with the first boy who asked.
He was the frighteningly intelligent and cynical editor of the school newspaper, whose political page she had recently supplied with a caricature of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. They went to see the movie Raising Arizona and shared a box of Skittles. Afterward, they were taking a shortcut to the subway when he began shivering spasmodically.
“It’s my blood vessels,” he said and lurched behind a Shoppers Drug Mart dumpster. “They get restricted, and I feel like I’m freezing to death.”
She offered him her jacket. He was about her size.
“No, thanks,” he said. “Believe it or not . . .” He laughed weakly. “This will sound like a joke.”
“What?”
“Ejaculation helps.”
“Pardon?”
“It gets my blood pumping.” He unzipped his pants.
Such an obvious lie. So stupid and stunning. If she stalked off, he’d see how fat her bum looked in her new jeans. She turned her head and stared at a plastic bag between the dumpster and the brick wall, and he reached for her hand and got her started. Once he’d established a vigorous stroke, he let her carry on alone. She was aware of him groaning and of tears smudging her vision. Just before he came, he grabbed his penis and aimed away from their legs. “Thanks,” he said, tucking it in his pants. “I feel a lot better.”
Little Sister Page 9
