Summer with My Sisters

by Holly Chamberlin

  “That’s Dad’s,” she had cried. “You have no right to be wearing it.”

  “Why not?” Poppy had asked, looking down at the large round face of the man’s watch on her left wrist.

  “Because you weren’t here. I was the one who stayed with him after Mom died. I was the one who saw what it did to him. You were the one who left us.”

  Her sister had blanched. “Mom told me before she died that I should get on with my life when she was gone,” Poppy said, her voice trembling with emotion. “I asked her if she wanted me to stay here with you and Dad and Violet and she said no.”

  Later, Daisy had felt bad about what she had said, but the pain of her father’s death due to a sudden and massive heart attack at the age of just sixty was all too fresh and it wouldn’t allow her to apologize to her sister. She just couldn’t help but see Poppy’s moving into their parents’ bedroom and her adopting their father’s watch as her own as an act of—an act of usurpation. Granted, Dad had appointed Poppy legal guardian over her sisters, but that didn’t give her the right to co-opt Oliver Higgins. Daisy, as her father’s favorite daughter (she knew this in her heart), was determined to be the keeper of his flame.

  It was funny, she thought. If it were Violet who was wearing their father’s watch, she wouldn’t be half as annoyed, probably not annoyed at all. Toward her quirky younger sister Daisy felt nothing but straightforward and uncomplicated affection. Toward Poppy . . . Well, once they had been very close, but that was a long time ago, before Poppy had gone to college, before she had left them and moved to Boston. By the time she had moved back to Yorktide four months earlier, Daisy felt that Poppy had become almost a total stranger. She wouldn’t be surprised if Poppy felt the same way about her. Anyway, nothing was as it should be now, so Daisy supposed she would have to get used to chaos. What she wouldn’t give for a boring, routine-filled life that was guaranteed never to change!

  She sat up on the edge of her bed, feet dangling. She had such clear and vivid memories of her father sitting just where she was now, singing her to sleep when she was little.

  Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do

  I’m half crazy all for the love of you

  It won’t be a stylish marriage

  I can’t afford a carriage

  But you’ll look sweet upon the seat

  Of a bicycle built for two

  Interesting, Daisy thought now, that she was never good on a bicycle. Never good at any sport, really. Poor coordination compounded by lack of interest. She would rather be reading or doing a crossword puzzle or playing her clarinet with her best friend, Joel, or volunteering at the Pine Hill Residence for the Elderly than getting sweaty running around chasing a ball. Much like her father. It was he who had instilled in her a passion for crosswords and he who more than anyone encouraged her dream of becoming a doctor. Not that her mother hadn’t been supportive, but it was Oliver Higgins who had given her a copy of the Physicians’ Desk Reference, and a copy of a work by the ancient Greek physician and philosopher Galen entitled On the Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul’s Passion, a very early attempt at psychotherapy. For Daisy’s birthday in April—two months after Oliver’s death—Freddie had passed on the present he had purchased for his middle daughter some time earlier, a book of high quality reproductions of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings. The Galen and the Leonardo were two of Daisy’s most valued possessions. Other sixteen-year-old girls—most of them, maybe—might be into taking endless selfies and following their favorite pop stars and models on Instagram, but not Daisy. It was with some pride that she considered herself a nerd.

  Daisy turned to look at the sampler that hung over her dresser, next to a poster of the cast of Game of Thrones. (In Daisy’s opinion, the show was beyond awesome.) Ages ago her mother had painstakingly embroidered lines from William Wordsworth’s poem entitled “To the Daisy.” (Daisy couldn’t imagine ever having the patience to make all those neat tiny stitches. Unless she decided to become a surgeon.)

  Thou liv’st with less ambitious aim,

  Yet hast not gone without thy fame;

  Thou art indeed by many a claim

  The Poet’s darling.

  . . .

  He needs but look about, and there

  Thou art!—a friend at hand, to scare

  His melancholy.

  She had mixed feelings about Mr. Wordsworth’s sentiment, at least, in relation to herself. Less ambitious aim? Wasn’t wanting to be a doctor a very ambitious aim? As for darling, well, she certainly didn’t feel like anyone’s darling, not now that her father was gone. And frankly, she didn’t understand how anyone, not even a poet, could get so worked up over a silly flower! Well, there was her younger sister . . . Violet could get pretty obsessed about flowers and herbs and all the good things they could do for people. And all the bad things, too, Daisy supposed. Poisons and all that. Even more so than their mother, Violet was interested in the legends and lore associated with plants, not only in the care and feeding of the green world. As for Daisy, neither flora nor fauna interested her half as much as did human beings in the here and now.

  And in the great beyond? Daisy got up from the bed and began to pace, something she did when she felt frustrated. She just didn’t know about the great beyond. She would like to think that her parents were—well, that they were somewhere, somehow, but she had no real faith that they were anything but gone.

  Her eye caught the sampler again as she continued to tramp. Her name didn’t really fit her at all, she thought. If her mother had been able to glimpse the sixteen-year-old in the baby she would have been better off calling her second daughter Cabbage or Pine Cone, something plain and prickly. Pineapple? Dangerous on the outside, sweet on the inside. Daisy smiled in spite of herself. And she realized that it was almost time for dinner and that she was seriously hungry. There probably wasn’t any pineapple in the kitchen, but there had to be something edible—if Poppy had remembered to go to the grocery store. Most times Poppy acted so . . . so tyrannical! Trying to change the way Oliver and Daisy and Violet had been doing things for the past three years, pretending to know better. But she routinely messed things up, like forgetting to turn on the dishwasher after she loaded it and then blaming Daisy for not turning it on when she realized that it wasn’t on and . . .

  No, Poppy was no parental figure, that was for sure. And though it was probably unfair to expect her to be one, Daisy wasn’t ready to be very sympathetic toward her sister. It wasn’t Daisy’s fault that Oliver Higgins had died or that he had requested (demanded?) that Poppy come home to the house on Willow Way. No, Daisy thought, coming to a halt and crossing her arms across her chest. None of it was her fault.

  But then whose fault was it?

  Chapter 3

  “What do you think, Grimace?”

  The large black and white Maine coon cat Violet had addressed stared unblinking at her from his seat at the exact center of her bed. Not long after Annabelle Higgins’s death a neighbor’s cat had given birth to a litter of eight and, thinking to raise the spirits of the youngest Higgins sister, the neighbor, a Mrs. Greene, had offered Violet her pick of the kittens. Violet had chosen Grimace; his name had come into her head only moments later.

  Grimace was no Grumpy Cat; he had the usual “smile” of the average feline. But the name seemed to fit him. Either that or he had grown to fulfill the promise it suggested of an often ill-tempered animal who cared for only his own comfort, sometimes even at the expense of his devoted human caretaker. Grimace thought nothing of swatting Violet’s face to wake her in the morning, or of screaming directly into her ear as she sat at her desk doing her homework because he wanted an after-dinner snack, or of chewing on her toes for no apparent reason at all, and none of this bothered Violet in the least. She loved Grimace. She needed him, especially now.

  “Well?” Violet prompted. “What do you think of this scarf with this skirt?”

  Grimace finally deigned to reply by getting to his feet, arching his
back in an extreme stretch, turning his tail to her, and resettling in a heap.

  “I thought so,” Violet said to the back of her cat’s head. She draped the silk paisley scarf over her desk chair and hung the long striped skirt in the closet.

  Violet Higgins loved her home and she especially loved her room, which she thought of as a sort of grotto. She had painted the walls (with help from her father) sea-glass green, and the wide baseboards ocean blue. The ceiling was a slightly lighter blue than the baseboards and across it in billowy drapes she (again, with her father’s help) had hung gauzy strips of pale pink and coral material. The room felt cool and soft and peaceful. A haven when the startling fact of her being an orphan flared into consciousness, which it might do at any time.

  In addition to the bed, desk and chair, and comfortably saggy armchair, the room contained an old wooden dresser her mother had painted white. (Grimace was systematically removing the paint with his claws.) On top of the dresser sat a small bowl Violet had made at pottery camp the previous summer; in the bowl was a heap of quartz crystals. Beside the bowl lived a chunk of raw amethyst and one of rose quartz. Hanging from the bed’s four posts were strings of beads—sponge coral, labradorite, aventurine, and carnelian. Because she was a Pisces, Violet kept a large, rough-cut aquamarine, one of the stones closely associated with the sun sign, on the small table beside her bed. It gave her a great sense of peace, as did the painting of a bunch of violets that hung over the dresser. Her mother had commissioned the painting from a local artist for her daughter’s first birthday.

  Over the years Annabelle had collected other images of violets—at flea markets and yard sales, at galleries and shops—and they had all found a special place in Violet’s room, as had her mother’s favorite gardening hat, which Violet had chosen to keep when most of Annabelle’s clothing had gone to the charity shop. The floppy straw sun hat was perched on top of the bookcase her father had built for her. (He had built one for Poppy and Daisy, too.) Next to the hat Violet had stacked several different decks of tarot cards, but not the famous Rider-Waite deck, which she found extremely scary and negative. In the bookcase there was a copy of the I Ching her parents had given her for her eleventh birthday, and a copy of a beginner’s guide to the Kabbalah. Next to that was a copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, her first online purchase made shortly after Christmas with a gift card the family’s friends Freddie and Sheila had given her. Over the past two years Violet had collected no fewer than six books on astrology and its practical applications. In the back of each book she kept notes about the people close to her and how they did or did not or only sometimes “fit” the descriptions of their sun and moon signs. (She was saving up her money to have her own chart done someday by a real professional.)

  On the shelf below these books were arranged some of her all-time favorite works of fiction: the trilogy by Philip Pullman called His Dark Materials, all of the Harry Potter titles, her mother’s childhood copy of The Secret Garden, a copy of the original, uncensored fairytales by the brothers Grimm, and a collection of folktales from the British Isles. On the wall over her bed Violet had hung a Native American dream catcher. Next to it was a Celtic-style cross, made of iron. Her father had found it for her on a business trip to Dublin.

  There was no mirror in Violet’s bedroom. She didn’t need to be reminded of her image; she knew it well enough. Though Violet put very little stock in appearance as a matter of achievement (a person’s aura was far more interesting and telling than how tall or short he was), she knew from the way so many people stared at her that she stood out in some way she couldn’t yet define. She was tall, like Poppy, and graceful in her movements. Unlike both of her older sisters she wore her hair very short, in a pixie cut. She had heard her features described as elfin. Her eyes were very blue and very large, much like her father’s had been. She liked to wear all sorts of natural stones, choosing them according to her mood. This day she wore a string of lapis lazuli beads around her neck and a chunky turquoise and silver ring on the middle finger of her right hand. She mostly dressed in stuff she found in local thrift and antique shops. She did not wear jeans or sneakers.

  Violet peered out of her bedroom window and noted by the quality of the light that it was almost six thirty and that meant dinnertime. Good. She was hungry. She hoped that Poppy wasn’t attempting to cook something difficult; it would only make her frustrated. Poppy wasn’t very good in the kitchen, but Violet sincerely appreciated her sister’s efforts.

  Grimace grumbled and Violet went over to the bed to stroke his muscular back. “Lay her i’ the earth,” she whispered as the cat’s grumble became a loud purr. “And from her fair and unpolluted flesh, may violets spring!”

  That was from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Violet had been leafing through Daisy’s copy of the play one evening when she came across those lines and she had immediately thought of her mother. The cancer that had taken a year to kill Annabelle had not been kind; it had left her body ravaged. But her spirit! Her spirit had remained fair and unpolluted until—and beyond—the very end. It was awfully ironic that Annabelle Higgins should die of lung cancer when she had never smoked a cigarette in her life. It only proved what Violet had already sensed, that life and death and whatever came after it were great mysteries, to be treated with respect and also with awe.

  Her parents had believed that, too. While neither had been religious, meaning they hadn’t professed a particular faith, they had believed in the possibility of the unknown, of a spirit world of unfathomable beauty and meaning. Violet remembered her father saying, “Why should there be a life after death as we know it? And why shouldn’t there be?” Violet believed—no, she knew—that there was more to life than what anyone could witness with the five senses. She felt this knowledge as surely as she felt hot under the summer sun and cold in the winter nights.

  She thought now of the words inscribed on her father’s headstone in the Yorktide Memorial Cemetery. “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”—François Rabelais. (Violet didn’t really know much about him.) For her own headstone Violet thought she would rewrite the quote to be: “I go to seek a Great Certainty.” Not that she was planning on dying any time soon. Not that she thought a lot about death. Only the usual amount. Only what could be expected of a sensitive thirteen-year-old girl who had lost both parents in the space of three years. And Violet knew that she was sensitive, and also, probably, what some people called “a sensitive.” An old soul. It was just who she was.

  There came a knock on the door and Grimace, who in spite of his contented purring had been staring at it intently for some minutes, as if anticipating some approaching activity, let out a low growl.

  “Violet?”

  Violet opened the door to her oldest sister.

  “Dinner’s ready,” Poppy said.

  Daisy came out of her room across the hall. “Finally! What are we having?” she asked.

  “Chicken.”

  “That doesn’t tell us much,” Daisy pointed out. “What kind of chicken?”

  “Well, a dead one, of course,” Violet said.

  Her sisters looked at her. Daisy was grinning. Poppy looked appalled.

  “What?” Violet asked. And then she, accompanied by Grimace, ran ahead of them down the stairs to the kitchen.

  Chapter 4

  Evie Jones wondered what people saw when they looked at her. She had never been so self-conscious as she had been these last few weeks. She was about five feet five inches, which she guessed was about medium height. Her eyes were brown fringed by long, thick lashes. Her hair had once been blond, but by the time she turned twelve it had darkened to a sort of honey tone. So far, so normal. But her hair was badly in need of a trim; the ends were all split and dry. She hadn’t been able to take a proper shower since passing through that campground three days back and she was highly conscious of the stain on the left sleeve of her pink hoodie. She had lost weight in the past weeks and had had to turn down the waist of her jeans so they would stay on her hips. Sh
e could feel a pimple coming out on her chin; she hadn’t remembered to bring any astringent with her when she left. There had been too many other more important things to remember.

  But maybe people didn’t even really see people like her—a fairly nondescript, slightly messy teenager. Maybe she was truly anonymous to the world. But she didn’t think she was that lucky and so she prayed that her appearance wouldn’t prevent her from being hired somewhere, anywhere. She would wait tables. She would clean toilets. She would walk dogs though dogs frightened her a little. She would babysit, if anyone were crazy enough to hire someone like her—no references, no friends, no family—to watch over their child.

  Someone carrying a false ID card. She had gotten it from a senior at the last school she had attended. It had cost her so much money, almost all she had saved from her allowance (which had been severely reduced months before), but she had decided it was necessary. Her heart had been racing madly while she waited behind the 7-Eleven for Jason Ames to find her when he had finished his work. His sly grin when he finally handed the card to her had made her stomach heave.

  Now Evie touched the pocket of her backpack where the card was stowed. She hoped it looked real. This was the first time she would have to use it (maybe) since leaving her aunt and uncle’s house in Vermont in the dead of night a few weeks earlier. She had no fear that when she was reported missing Jason Ames had told anyone that he had made her a false ID; it would only get him in trouble. Plus, she hadn’t said a word to Jason about her plans. For all he knew she wanted the ID—complete with a phony name—so that she could get into that eighteen-and-over dance club in town.

  Evie stopped before a sign set back from the sidewalk, at the base of which was a ring of petunia plants. Yorktide, Maine. Incorporated 1678. She had determined on Yorktide as a destination because once, many years ago, she and her parents had visited for a three-day weekend. They had gone to the beach, eaten ice cream cones (her mother loved salted caramel ice cream), browsed in the craft shops after a dinner of lobster rolls and French fries and coleslaw, visited the Yorktide Historical Society’s museum, and had even gone into Ogunquit to see a musical at the playhouse, though Evie couldn’t remember what it was. Something about pirates? She did remember her mother being so very happy, looking so lovely in her colorful sundresses and chunky turquoise jewelry, her eyes shining with pleasure. Her father, too, she remembered as happy and handsome, but she tried to block him out of the pictures in her head. She thought that if she tried hard enough she might be able to rewrite her past, cast it with only good people like her mother. Just Mom and me . . .