Summer with My Sisters

by Holly Chamberlin

  But what possible excuse could she give for wanting to get to know Evie? She had thought and thought about it and finally, an idea had struck her, a decidedly weak idea, but it was better than none. A more creative person might be able to come up with a better plan for how she could go about befriending a virtual stranger, but Daisy was reluctant to involve anyone else in her—her scheme. Reluctant and a bit embarrassed. Anyone with a finely tuned sense of right behavior might think she was butting in where she wasn’t meant to be. Daisy had been accused of that before, like the time she had gone up to a woman in the Kittery outlets mall. The woman was dabbing her red and swollen eyes and sniffing loudly. “Are you okay?” Daisy asked. “Are you hurt? Can I do something?” The woman had summarily told Daisy to “mind her damned business” and stalked off. Only later did it occur to Daisy that the woman might only have been suffering from allergies.

  You think I would have learned my lesson, Daisy thought. But I’m doomed to be a Good Samaritan.

  Without further hesitation, Daisy opened the door to The Clamshell and took her place in line behind a couple in matching Kelly green pants and bright yellow polo shirts. When the cheerfully dressed couple had placed their order and moved aside to wait for it, Daisy stood face-to-face with Evie.

  “It’s me again,” she said.

  “You must really like the fried clams,” Evie replied with an awkward smile.

  “I’m addicted to them.” Just do it, Daisy told herself. “Look,” she said, “I was kind of wondering if you wanted to hang out sometime. I know this sounds kind of pathetic, but I really don’t have any girlfriends—I have two sisters, but they don’t count—and I love my best friend, but he’s a guy, so . . .” Daisy shrugged and was very glad she wasn’t prone to blushing because she knew that her plan—such as it was—had failed. The look on Evie’s face was one of—well, it was one of downright suspicion, maybe mixed with a little fear, the kind you felt when you met someone who was clearly deranged.

  “I don’t really have much time,” Evie said, looking down at the order pad on the counter before her. “I’m working a double shift today.”

  “Oh,” Daisy said. “Right. Well, maybe some other day.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” Evie looked up again, but her eyes wouldn’t quite meet Daisy’s. “So, do you want to place an order?”

  Daisy didn’t feel at all hungry, but she thought that not to order something might make Evie think she was even more deranged than she already suspected. “Uh, sure,” she said. “The fried clams. And an order of fries.”

  She stepped aside to let the person behind her order, and when her meal was ready she took the tray from the server behind the counter with Evie and left the restaurant quickly. Oh, well, she thought, settling at one of the picnic tables outside. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Still, she did feel like a bit of an idiot. Who in her right mind went up to a virtual stranger and confessed that she was lonely for a friend? Okay, it had been a ruse to cover the fact of her curiosity about Evie. Still, what would Poppy say if she knew? What would Joel say? Violet would probably want to cure her of her pathetic-ness (Daisy knew that wasn’t a word, but she liked it) with some herb or stone.

  Well, it didn’t matter what anyone thought of her behavior because nobody was going to find out about her failed attempt to—to what? To rescue someone. Like she had failed to rescue that woman in the mall.

  Like she had failed to rescue her father.

  Chapter 31

  “It’s very pretty, as cemeteries go.”

  Poppy nodded. “Yes, and very old. Some graves date back to the seventeenth century.”

  “Lots of babies and children, I suppose.” Allie shuddered. “I’m so glad to be living in the twenty-first century, though we certainly have our problems.”

  “Yes. It was my father’s decision to have the lines from the Edgar Allan Poe poem put on my mother’s stone, you know. She just wanted her dates and something like ‘loving wife and mother.’”

  “Really? Do you suppose she’d be mad?”

  Poppy smiled. “I don’t think my parents were ever mad at each other, for anything. And if they were they must have gotten over it pretty quickly because I never witnessed a fight, not even a squabble.”

  “Hard act to follow.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What about the Rabelias quote on your father’s stone?” Allie asked.

  “He left instructions about that in his will.”

  “So much easier to be cremated. No pressure to choose memorable final words.”

  And what would my final message be, Poppy wondered. At that moment she had absolutely no idea.

  “Do you come here often?” Allie asked.

  “Not really. I can think about my parents just as easily from home.” Poppy smiled. “Cemetery visits are more Violet’s thing. As far as I know Daisy hasn’t been here since my father’s funeral, and before that, my mother’s.”

  “Well, I must say I’ve never been a huge fan of cemeteries, aside from their possible historical and aesthetic interest.”

  Poppy looked down at her parents’ graves and fought a familiar wave of sadness. Sometimes it was so hard to believe that the two most vibrant people she had ever known were still and under the earth. No more fascinating talk. No more bell-like laughter. No more smiles.

  “I want my mother to look down at me,” she said quietly after a moment, “assuming she’s somewhere above me, of course; why do human beings always think of the afterlife as in the sky? Anyway, I want her to be proud of how I’m helping my sisters. But I can’t help but feel—I can’t help but know—that she isn’t proud. That she’s disappointed in the way I’m handling this responsibility. Dad, too.”

  Allie gave a mirthless laugh. “We’re always trying to please our parents, even when they’re gone. Even when we didn’t like them when they were here.”

  “Did you not like your parents?” Poppy asked. “You’ve never really talked much about them.”

  Allie laughed. “What do you think? They basically sold me into marriage when I was twenty-one. Well, that was the sort of people they were. I don’t think they had a warm feeling between them. And I was completely in their thrall.”

  “Completely? I find that hard to believe, knowing you. You always seem so in charge.”

  “I was very different then,” Allie said, her voice taking on a more serious note. “A child, really. My marriage was Prince Charles and Princess Diana all over again, a suave man and a naive girl. A man who was in love with another woman, and three is most definitely a crowd. Luckily I worked up the gumption—what a funny word that is! It always makes me think of barbershop poles and penny candy shops! Anyway, I finally worked up the gumption to leave after two years. To say my dear spouse was relieved would be an understatement. To be fair, I think he was as unhappy in the marriage as I was. Barely a year later he married his true love and I have to admit they make a charming pair.”

  Poppy found the whole thing pretty appalling, but was always reluctant to join in criticism of someone else’s parents. “Well, your parents couldn’t have been all bad,” she said, aware it was a lame remark.

  Allie looked up at her. “Oh?”

  “Sorry.”

  After a long beat of silence, Poppy ventured another question. “When did they die, anyway? You never told me.”

  Allie frowned. “Confession time. They didn’t. They’re still alive. Well, as far as I know. I cut ties with them years ago. I’m not entirely sure they’ve noticed. They’ve still got my brother—I’m assuming. He’s a good doobie, a chip off the old block of granite. The parents arranged his marriage, too, but he proved far more willing than I was to play the game. She’s an heiress, by the way. Of course. Oh, and did I mention that after my divorce I was cut out of my parents’ will? Good thing my beloved cheating husband settled a few million on me. And that I evinced a talent for investment.”

  “I’m so sorry, Allie. I’m always going on about how great my parents were,
how happy we all were. I shouldn’t have . . .”

  “Hey, don’t apologize for loving your mother and father! Frankly, it’s nice to know that happy families do actually exist.”

  “Or did.”

  Allie took Poppy’s arm. “You and your sisters are still in the here and now. Don’t forget that. The Higgins family is changed, not gone.”

  “I’m not sure I believe that,” Poppy admitted. “I’m pretty sure Daisy absolutely doesn’t believe that. And who knows what Violet thinks.”

  Allie smiled. “Whatever Violet thinks, it’s deep.”

  “That’s for sure! If I didn’t love her I might find her a little frightening.”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here. What time is it? I could use a glass of wine. Talking about my parents always makes me want to get properly drunk. Tight, as the English say.”

  “Polluted, as we might say here.” Poppy put her arm around her friend’s shoulder. “There’s plenty of wine at home.”

  Chapter 32

  She was behind the wheel of a car. It wasn’t her car. It wasn’t her parents’ car, either. She didn’t know to whom the car belonged and she didn’t care. She was tooling along what seemed like an unusually wide road. There were no other cars on the road. The windows were open and her hair was whipping around in the breeze. She was having fun. She was surprised at this. She felt relaxed. She felt in control. And then the road seemed to narrow, just a bit, but she blinked and the road was normal again and she dismissed it as an optical illusion. And then it occurred to her to wonder where she was and where she had come from and where she was going. Again, the road seemed to narrow and this time it wasn’t an optical illusion, it was real. It went on narrowing so that from one second to the next there was less and less room on either side of the car and where once there was only endless road to the left and the right, now there were two blank walls of bright white light. It was like being in a tunnel that was being folded up by some giant invisible hand. She tapped the breaks. Nothing. She pushed down hard on them, but the car continued to accelerate down the ever-shrinking road. She was now hurtling through a tight white tunnel toward a tiny, tiny dot of a vanishing point.... A wall? A doorway? An illusion within an illusion? Once more she frantically pumped the brakes, but to no avail and the car zoomed ahead....

  Evie’s eyes shot open. Her heart was pounding and her nightshirt was wet with sweat. It wasn’t the first time she had experienced this nightmare and she feared it wouldn’t be the last. She reached for Ben and held him tightly to her chest. She would never, ever get a driver’s license! She hadn’t been able to be in a car since the horrific crash that had killed her mother and maimed her father without being overcome by a sense of panic and she was plagued by this terrible dream and . . .

  Evie shut her eyes against the dark night. If only there was someone she could turn to, someone she could talk to or laugh with. She thought that she might go crazy with only Ben to share her life. It wasn’t normal for a person to be so alone. It wasn’t fair.

  That girl, Daisy. The one who seemed so nice, so honest and unpretentious. Evie could imagine her listening to a friend, offering advice, maybe even laughing about silly fears. She could, just barely, imagine the two of them comforting each other about the not-so-silly fears. Maybe she could take just one little risk . . . But she would see how she felt about that in the morning.

  One thing Evie knew for sure. If she did approach Daisy, and if they did become friends of a sort, she would have to lie about some things, maybe most things about herself. And she would have to hope that Daisy didn’t find out about the lies. Because no one wanted a liar as a friend.

  Chapter 33

  Violet, Daisy, and Allie were sitting around the rectangular stone table in the garden, a pitcher of lemonade and a big bunch of green grapes before them. Grimace sat close by Violet’s chair, eyeing whatever birds were brave enough to hop around on the grass within leaping distance. The rhododendrons were in full pink bloom. The roses were bravely budding. The hydrangea bushes, too, were beginning to flower; before long they would be heavy with bundles of purple-blue blossoms. Violet could smell the rosemary and the basil from the herb garden; the garden was flourishing as it had never done before. The fragrance helped calm her.

  Daisy looked at her iPhone. “I thought Poppy would be back by now. Her hair appointment was at two. It’s almost three thirty.”

  “Maybe she’s enjoying some time alone, without us,” Violet said. “I don’t mean you, Allie. I mean Daisy and me.”

  Allie nodded. “Everyone needs time alone. Remember, Poppy’s lived on her own for the past three years. Now she’s got three roommates, even if I’m only temporary.”

  “But we’re her family, Violet and I. We’re not really the same as roommates. Though I guess I see your point.”

  “Familiarity breeds contempt.” Violet frowned. “It’s really an awful idea, but it’s probably sometimes true.”

  “Your sister would never feel contempt for either of you,” Allie said. “Of that I’m sure.”

  “She used to laugh a lot,” Daisy said. “When we were kids. Now half the time she looks like she’s in pain. It’s like there’s always something on her mind. Something big and dreary and important. She’s getting boring. Sorry, but it’s true.”

  “There is something big on her mind,” Allie said. “Life. Her life. What to do with it. How not to waste it.”

  “We all think about the future and what to do with it,” Violet said. Sometimes, she thought, I think about the future so much I forget to notice what’s happening in front of me right now. “I wish it didn’t make Poppy feel so sad.”

  “I think Poppy feels sad because she hasn’t found her passion yet,” Allie said. “She hasn’t decided on her goal.”

  “My goal is to be a doctor,” Daisy told Allie. “I’ve known that for sure since I was little. You know, my favorite parts of Mom’s book are where she talks about all the skills a woman needed to have back before medical care was institutionalized the way it is now. Wives, daughters, mothers, everyone was a bit of a midwife and a GP and an ER nurse all rolled into one. It was pretty awesome.”

  “And I want to be like those women who made medicines and poultices from flowers and plants,” Violet said. “I want to become a wise-woman healer. I don’t have all the details worked out of course.” And before someone could heal another person, they had to be healed themselves, and Violet was beginning to feel that she had not even begun to heal from the pain of her parents’ deaths, in spite of what she told those around her. She felt her heart begin to race a bit and concentrated on calming it.

  Allie was smiling. “I must say, you girls have set pretty wonderful goals for yourselves. When I was your age I never thought further ahead than the weekend and what I was going to wear to a party.”

  “Did you know that people have told Poppy she should be a model?” Daisy asked Allie.

  “No. She never mentioned that.”

  “It’s true. Even one of her teachers back in high school suggested she sign with an agency. But she wasn’t interested.”

  Violet shuddered. “Mom and Dad would have hated that kind of life for her. Life is so much more than appearances.”

  “Well, it’s an honest living for some,” Allie pointed out, “but there’s far more to your sister than a pretty face and an enviable figure.”

  “She’s just not sure what, is that it?” Daisy asked.

  “Exactly. Though I hope I’m not speaking out of line in telling you all this.”

  “Capricorns often go into community service,” Violet said musingly. “Maybe that’s what Poppy will do.”

  Daisy laughed. “Poppy? Community service? I just can’t see her, I don’t know, helping a bunch of strangers. And she won’t even go to a town meeting. I don’t think she’s a joiner.”

  “Ssshh.” Allie looked pointedly at Daisy, and Violet looked over her shoulder to see her oldest sister coming across the lawn. When Poppy reached the g
roup she took a seat in one of the chairs gathered around the table.

  “Your hair looks pretty,” Violet said.

  “What took you so long?”

  Poppy laughed. “Thanks, Violet. And to answer your question, Daisy, I was taking a stroll on the beach.”

  Violet nodded. “Told you.”

  “What’s been going on here?” Poppy asked. “Have you been plotting my overthrow?”

  “Oh, no,” Violet said seriously. “We’ve been talking about life.”

  Poppy laughed. “Oh, a nice light topic! And what did you decide about life with a capital L?”

  “That life is meaningless without a goal.”

  Violet tried to catch Daisy’s eye, but her sister wouldn’t look at her. She shouldn’t have said that, Violet thought. It was mean. Her sister wasn’t a mean person, but she had these moments.. . . “That’s not what we were saying,” Violet corrected. “We were saying that everyone searches for her passion in life and that sometimes it’s hard to find.”

  “Right.” Allie nodded. “Sometimes we just can’t see what it is we’re meant to do until something strange happens or someone unexpectedly comes into our lives and reveals it. Our goal.”

  “Well,” Poppy said, reaching for a grape, “I guess my catalyst hasn’t shown up yet.”

  “Or else he, she, or it is already here and you just haven’t recognized the opportunity,” Allie suggested.

  “Your vision is clouded,” Violet suggested. Certainly, she felt her own vision seemed to be clouded more often than not lately. “That might be it, Poppy. Because of all that’s changed so suddenly. The clouds still have to drift away.”

  Poppy smiled at Violet. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Well,” Allie said, “you know my mantra, or one of them anyway. If you tell yourself you’re having fun or succeeding in life, eventually you will be having fun or succeeding. In other words, ‘act as if’. Act as if you know what you’re doing and eventually, you will.”