Sisters of Heart and Snow

by Margaret Dilloway

  It strikes me that even though I could sketch all these faces in my sleep—even though one gave birth to me, one inhabited the same womb I did, and I literally grew the other one inside me—all of them are really strangers now. Unknown to me, really. And I’m unknown to them. Because isn’t that what happens when we grow up? We leave each other.

  I close my eyes and swim faster.

  • • •

  Drew decides to drown this afternoon’s humiliation in a diet Pepsi. What she really needs is a kick-in-the-sternum Jack and Coke. Jack, like the musician she met today. She almost giggles at the reference. “I’m losing it,” she whispers to the photo of the English sheepdog drooling over a Milk-Bone.

  She opens the mini fridge under the desk, hoping that she missed a little whiskey or vodka bottle amid the old bagged salads and half-eaten Dannons. It’s turned up too high, ice filming over everything. She pushes a spot clean on the desk, amid papers and tufts of dog hair in blacks and tans and whites. She cracks the can open slowly, and pours it into a child’s plastic take-out cup, pleased to see that the soda comes out the consistency of a Slurpee. Perfect. This, at least, is the bright spot in her day. She sits back in the ergonomic chair her employer, Liza, bought. An awfully expensive chair, considering this office is essentially a storage closet.

  This is Dogwarts Dog Grooming, located in a little strip mall off of Beverly Boulevard. Not the Beverly Hills part of Beverly Boulevard, but farther east, next to an all-night burrito joint and a legalized marijuana shop, the parking lot always crowded with red-eyed, sleepy people. The interior looks like a preschooler’s approximation of an English castle, with fake stone walls and a built-in turret on which a fake sleeping dog sleeps, his nylon-furred, black-and-white sides moving up and down eternally. Dogwarts is closed today, because Drew had another job and Liza is off on what she called a “cleansing cruise” for the next three weeks, where she’ll get her aura purified and lots of hot stone massages, or something of that nature.

  Drew’s not a hundred percent sure. She only knows that Liza, a never-married woman in her late fifties, has called Drew three times during her vacation and requested wire transfers of thousands of dollars. It’s making Drew nervous, this hemorrhaging when there’s so little coming in; but tomorrow she’s got two groomings, an overgrown Labradoodle and a Newfoundland, so that will eat up at least half the day. The viola gig came at just the right time.

  The viola gig. Drew takes a big pull of the soda, getting a chunk of ice. Today was the final recording session of Drew’s backup strings for an alternative rock band, Time in Purgatory, working along with ten other classically trained instrumentalists.

  Everyone else had already left the studio, except for Drew and the lead singer. Drew fiddled with the locks on her viola case, feeling, she thought, a warmth between them.

  This band’s about to take off, U2 style. Radio stations are already playing tracks off the second album, and everybody’s talking about the release of this one. She’s still humming the song they recorded today. It’ll be one of those songs they play ten times a day until you’re properly sick of it, like it’s some radio conspiracy to make people hate songs they once loved. But right now, it’s still new.

  A musicians’ agency books Drew for these gigs. She’s played viola for chocolate and lotion commercials, for Italian restaurant radio ads (she’s always playing that cheesily romantic “Bella Notte” song from Lady and the Tramp), for educational baby DVDs. (Drew still can’t believe anybody lets babies watch television—her sister, Rachel, would have rather poked her own eyes out than let her precious babies be stunted by television. Okay, exaggeration. But not by much.)

  These gigs aren’t bad work by any means. Not that steady, but Drew’s got it better than most musicians. The occasional gig supplements her dog-grooming job. And who knows—one could turn into something one day.

  Maybe even a relationship.

  Drew sinks down into her comfortable chair and takes a pull so strong on her soda that she gets brain freeze. Relationship. Yeah, right. She’d rather forget.

  How Drew had smiled at the lead singer, Jack, as he packed up reams of sheet music into an accordion folder, carefully sorting by instrumental part. It reminded her, with a twinge in her stomach (regret? annoyance? she couldn’t identify which feeling; they felt interchangeable sometimes, in her untrustworthy gut), of the old days, when Drew used to arrange music for the rock band she was in, Out Stealing Horses.

  Drew quit grad school at twenty-five to be in that band, quit for her boyfriend, Jonah, because she didn’t want him traveling, having fun, without her. They didn’t want a viola player, so she banged the tambourine, standing in the background, stage left of the drummer, hundreds of cables swirled around her ankles like chains. Her most important role was that of the music arranger, as Drew was the only one with a music degree and the only one who could do notation.

  For seven years, off and on, with Drew always working some job that could easily be left if need be, they’d traveled from one club to another, to every dive on the West Coast until they were signed by a minor label; then to every county fair and second-rate musical festival in the country. The crowds grew at each venue. Drew wrote some music, hoped she’d prove her worth and get a larger role. Once she wrote an entire song, “Out of Bounds,” with a beautiful viola part that backed up and supported the other instruments, like the frame of a house. That’s not the kind of music we play, Yoko, the bassist said. The guitar’s the frame, not you. Jonah told her it wasn’t quite right for them. She told herself it didn’t matter, that she was only sticking around because of Jonah, The One. She wouldn’t have put up with that for anyone else.

  That’s what you get for putting all your eggs in one basket. Her literal ovarian eggs—nearly all of them wasted on Jonah. They’d broken up almost two years ago now.

  Drew was lucky to be doing anything even semi-professional with music. Most of the other music majors in her year went into other fields after graduation, their student loans and then mortgages and weddings and babies absorbing their freshly hatched ambitions. Drew would see her old friends and they’d tell her, You’re so lucky to be doing what you love. I just became a corporate cubicle slave. And Drew would feel a glimmer of gratitude and pride.

  Finally, Jonah’s band signed with a big label and embarked on a European tour, and Drew was unceremoniously released from both the band and the relationship. “It wouldn’t have worked out long term anyway,” Drew told Jonah, wanting to be the one to say it first. Jonah, staring at Drew with his large Siamese cat eyes, had at least been kind enough to give her that courtesy. “If we had kids, both of us can’t be traveling the world, and I hate being left behind.” This was absolutely true. At least this all had ended before Drew hit her mid-thirties, and really lost all of the best years of her life.

  And so Drew returned to Los Angeles, to her viola and her side jobs. Then, at some point, her side job became the viola instead, and the side job became the main job, the transition taking place so fluidly that Drew didn’t notice it had happened until Rachel had asked her about it last Christmas. “Are you spending most of your time at the grooming salon these days?” Rachel asked, encased in the bubble of her perfect family. “Not too many music jobs in this economy, I suppose.” Rachel couldn’t see how much this question hurt Drew. Or possibly she did. Drew could no longer tell.

  Drew put her viola case on the floor with a bang. Snap out of it, she told herself. Here she sat in this studio, wasting her chance with Jack as she questioned every life choice she’d made since high school graduation.

  Jack turned to her. “How do you think the final version sounds?”

  Drew’s eyes snapped up to meet his green ones. She was unable to think of anything to say except, Quit talking and kiss me. “Um, good,” she said instead, and wished she hadn’t. She hated it when someone told her she was “really good,” after a performance. Good cou
ld mean anything—Okay, Great, I was asleep. Good meant you didn’t care. “Fantastic. It’s going to be a hit.”

  He nodded and looked back down at the papers with a pleased smile. She wasn’t attracted to Jack because he was about to hit it big. Drew liked him because of his clear, wavering tenor; because he closed his eyes when he sang; because he had tousled blond hair like a Lab puppy’s; because the muscles of his tanned skin were visible under his white T-shirt. And when he smiled at her (often and more than he smiled at anyone else—Drew counted), pleasant shivers, as if she’d just tasted an ice cream cone, traveled all over her body. “More robust,” he said to Drew after the first rehearsal this morning.

  “Robust like Arabica beans?” She nodded toward his coffee.

  “Robust as those coffee beans they have to dig out of squirrel poop.” Everyone laughed.

  All day they’d been flirting, bantering, and now Drew thought this was her big chance. She stared at him from under her thick ebony lashes. In certain lights, her eyes were as amber as pieces of petrified tree resin, the effect magnified (she hoped) by the thick black eyeliner that had been Drew’s signature look since the age of fourteen. Without the eyeliner, Drew thought her half-Asian eyes disappeared into her face.

  She glanced at her phone. It was nearly three, and the traffic on the 405 was only going to get worse. If she wanted to get home, she’d have to leave immediately or be gridlocked for two hours. That was what her love life came down to: traffic-based decisions. Come on, she willed. We haven’t got all day. She smoothed down her denim mini and crossed her long legs in a casual attempt to get him to look at her.

  “Hey,” she said huskily to Jack, who finally finished organizing his papers. “Feel like getting a drink?”

  Jack blinked, blatant surprise and mild dismay on his suddenly awfully young-looking face, though he was her exact age. A mottled flush settled over Drew’s fair skin. Well, shit. She’d read that wrong? Really?

  She’d been doing a lot of that lately. Reading things wrong.

  To cover herself, she rolled her shoulders. “Alcohol. Relaxes the muscles. You know.” She pointed vaguely at her chin, which she knew bore the mark of her chin rest. “My neck. It’s super sore.”

  “Ah, yeah.” Jack snapped the folder closed. “We’re meeting at the Black Crow around the corner. If you want to join us.” He flashed her a quick, friendly smile. But that was all it was. Friendly.

  The studio door opened and a young woman walked in. At least ten years younger than Drew, who was thirty-four and therefore decrepit by Los Angeles standards. She smiled at Drew, her big teeth so juvenile they still had those serrated edges. “Hey, Jack. Ready to load the van?” She had long brown hair, like Drew, and high cheekbones and full lips. All not unlike Drew. Even her frame, a tallish five-seven and bones thin enough to wrap a hand around and overlap a finger, was about the same size as Drew. But this girl had that youthful sleekness Drew was starting to lose, as if Drew’s skin had already begun pulling away from her bones. It didn’t seem fair, to deteriorate physically so fast in her mid-thirties, before she even had the chance to have a baby. Drew swallowed, aware suddenly of the gap between her and this woman, the unspoken biological need that made men desire younger and younger women, no matter how close to her age the men were.

  When she first moved to L.A. for college, Drew had been horrified by all the plasticky-looking people. Women with enlarged lips looking for all the world like wax candy, with their bolted-on breasts and shiny waxen skin. The weirdest thing, she thought, was that nobody acted like this was anything out of the ordinary, these aliens walking among them. Now she seriously considered joining them.

  Back then, Drew felt so superior about her own skin situation. “Half-Asian skin, baby,” she told people, and held her hand up for a high-five. “Doesn’t get wrinkly until you’re at least sixty.” The indestructible twenties, when you’re superior to everyone and everything. Back then, she would have been this girl, smiling with perfect confidence at this elderly interloper. Nobody could take a man from Drew. How bitchily powerful that had felt. She hadn’t felt like a bitch at the time, of course, but now she sees that she probably was.

  Jack lifted his beautiful face for a kiss from the other beautiful face. “Priscilla, Drew.”

  “Hello,” Priscilla chirped, picking up the accordion folder. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Drew echoed numbly.

  “See you at the bar, maybe.” Jack nodded at her and exited the glass-walled studio, Priscilla close behind.

  Drew dropped her head, staring at the pocked black plastic of her viola case. There was no sound in here except for the air faintly whistling through her nose, a by-product of seasonal allergies. Suddenly she saw herself how Jack must see her. A semi-employed cougar, practically Basic Instinct–ing herself at him. Pitiable. She caught sight of herself in the glass between the sound booth and the studio. Her eyeliner was streaked into the fine lines beneath her eyes. Well, great. The cherry on it all.

  In the pet grooming office, Drew shudders at the memory and pretends that this soda is making everything all better, forcing herself to drink it all fast so she gets a throbbing headache. “That hit the spot,” she says to a picture of a hairy mutt, a grooming guide stuck up on the wall, arrows pointing at all the places that needed trimming with various shear sizes.

  She fires up the laptop so she can wire Liza another two grand, her stomach tensing at the dwindling balance. Honestly, she isn’t sure how Liza stays in business. Liza comes from a rich family, the offspring of someone who’d invested early in Wendy’s, so this business is mostly a way for Liza to stay busy. A vanity operation. But lately money hasn’t been being deposited, and Drew doesn’t know where it’s gone, or if it’s gone for good.

  Drew waits for the laptop to hum to life and regards the empty plastic cup sitting in front of her, where Mickey and Minnie Mouse hold hands and proclaim, in Gothic script, The Happiest Place on Earth. She doesn’t know precisely when her life turned into this big sticky oatmeal cookie of a mess. One, two wrong turns—detours, really—and she’d veered completely off the path to wherever she was headed. But Drew kept thinking that if she only turned around, turned right, she could find her way back.

  If she had a destination. Something’s got to change.

  She takes a small black spiral-bound notebook out of her bag. She’s carried one around since she was a kid, to write down ideas for song lyrics and music notes. Drew used to set it on the toilet tank outside the shower because that’s where she thought of her best ideas, and the notebook would get wet and curled, the ink running. When she was in the band, she’d fill up one every two weeks.

  This one still looked factory-new. She opens it to the second page, the first page having been filled with a grocery list, and stares at the dogs on the wall and tries to will a new song to come to her.

  All she hears is the refrigerator whirring.

  Her phone buzzes again and she lifts it to her ear. “I’ve almost got it done, Liza, but you need to deposit more money by the fifteenth for the rent.” It’s October 2, she notes.

  “Hey.” A younger voice, not Liza’s raspy twang. As familiar to Drew as her own. Her big sister. Rachel clears her throat.

  “Rachel,” Drew says. She wasn’t expecting her sister to call. Fear laces up her insides. “What happened? Mom? One of the kids?”

  “Everybody’s fine.”

  Drew exhales. She talks to her sister on the phone a grand total of maybe five times a year, if they’re lucky, and lately they hadn’t been. Their conversations had grown shorter and shorter over the years, until it was simply an exchange like, “Happy birthday! The kids want to talk to Aunt Drew.” On major holidays, Drew stops by to see the children, but she’s never felt quite comfortable staying for too long. Like she’s intruding on her sister’s impenetrable family unit. That’s just how it was between them. Rac
hel getting kicked out had turned them into virtual strangers.

  When Rachel and Drew were young, they were inseparable. Or at least Drew had felt that way, tagging along after her older sister wherever she went, until Rachel hit her mid-teens and became the problem child, leaving Drew behind as the everlasting gobstopper in her family. Drew, the musical talent. How her parents had pinned their hopes on her.

  Then their roles had reversed. All of Drew’s potential had evaporated when she picked up the tambourine for the band. It is Rachel now who has it all. Rachel who turned her sinking ship of a life around and made it into something beautiful, with her great kids and truly great husband. Pillar of the community, that Rachel.

  Drew has the feeling Rachel gave up on her years ago. Wrote her off as Eccentric Sister, she who will never get her life together. Drew can actually feel Rachel rolling her eyes through the phone every time they speak. It’s that visceral. The Rachel Glare. Her sister’s never been good at hiding feelings. Drew’s teeth grind automatically, thinking of Rachel’s judgment. She’s got bigger problems. Her phone beeps again. A Liza call awaits. “Can I call you back in like two minutes?”

  “No.” Rachel sounds determined. “This is really important. It is about Mom, though.”

  The office phone rings now, and an e-mail pops up in front of Drew. WHERE ARE YOU CALL ME, Liza has written. Drew groans inwardly, and, fed up with Liza and her constant demands, silences the office phone and swivels away from the computer. “What can I help you with?” She sounds formal yet cheerful, how she imagines a midwestern front-desk clerk to be. Maybe that’s where she’ll move. Where people aren’t so concerned with appearances, and she can be a real person.

  “I went to visit Mom today,” Rachel says.