The Other Sister

by Dianne Dixon

  Ali

  Ali had walked through a front entryway flanked by glass panels etched with the word JOY. The irony hit her like a slap.

  She wobbled a little. Then steadied herself by leaning against a pillar near the reception desk.

  Ava was a few feet away, folding napkins at the antique pine sideboard that ran along the restaurant’s north wall. Ali was surprised to see that the dining room was almost empty. Only three customers—a regular named Mr. Wallace, who had thinning hair the color of dried orange peels, was at one of the smaller tables where he’d barely touched his plate of eggs and was hunched over a smudged résumé, and two women in expensive yoga gear were at a table in the middle of the room, chatting over coffee and sharing a scone.

  It had only been four days since Ali was attacked; she was in a haze of pain and confusion. For a moment, she wondered why the restaurant wasn’t full. Thinking it was time for the breakfast rush. Then remembering it was already midmorning.

  She let go of the pillar she’d been leaning against and began her trek across the dining room. Matt was outside in the car. Ali had asked him to drive her to the restaurant before he went to his office. And he was still there, at the curb, on the other side of the plate-glass window. From the minute she left the car, she was aware that he hadn’t taken his eyes off her, yet she’d continued to walk away, refusing to acknowledge him.

  Ali was halfway across the dining area now, her gaze meeting Ava’s—and she understood Ava’s gasp. It was in reaction to the haunted look in Ali’s eyes and the hesitant way she was moving, as if some essential piece of her had been blown apart.

  “In the name of the Blessed Mother, what has been done to you?” Ava swiftly put her arms around Ali, shielding her from the customers’ curious glances. Ava’s embrace was light and at the same time fiercely protective.

  • • •

  Strength and protection were gifts Ava had given Ali from the moment they’d met. When Ali had been in the walled garden at the back of her soon-to-be-opened restaurant. She was aching and blistered from working alongside the construction crew—day and night, for months—transforming a crumbling, quirky, century-old space into a tiny, beautiful, twenty-first-century restaurant.

  Ali was shouting “Roses! We agreed on yellow roses!” while a Hispanic landscaper, pretending he didn’t speak English, was delivering a river of red geraniums.

  “No! No! You said you’d bring yellow roses!” Ali snatched up the geraniums, trying to give them back to the landscaper. As he blithely sidestepped her, they were interrupted by the sound of a woman’s voice, saying a single word: “Hola!”

  That voice stopped Ali and the landscaper in their tracks. It had music in it, like golden bells.

  The woman to whom it belonged was standing in the doorway of the restaurant kitchen. She was young. Slender. Her dark hair gathered into a waist-length braid. Her eyes were luminous, and her skin was the color of golden-brown sugar. The fabric of her bright-pink dress was floating and silky. A silver cross hung from a length of magenta-colored ribbon loosely tied around her neck. She was pregnant. Her folded hands resting lightly on the swell of her belly.

  When she called out her initial greeting, she had been addressing Ali. Now she was talking to the landscaper, engaging him with a sly grin, “¿Le cobraste por las rosas? Bueno. Llevarás algo de dinero extra a tu casa.”

  The landscaper was laughing. “Sí. Mucho dinero.”

  She scowled and whispered something in his ear. He immediately began to gather up the geraniums. “So sorry! I bring roses. Quick. Many, many roses. All yellow!”

  The woman turned to Ali, serene. “He was trying to cheat. Taking money for expensive flowers and giving cheap ones.” Her expression was impish. “I whispered to him that you are my sister-in-law, and if those lousy geraniums don’t turn into roses real fast, my brother will arrive. And bust him open. Like a piñata.”

  Ali’s laugh was cut short by a loud cannon-like bang from the restaurant’s interior.

  Both Ali and the woman rushed toward the kitchen door. As they ran, the woman told Ali, “My name is Ava. I see you have a restaurant coming here, and I need a job.”

  “Have you worked in a restaurant before?”

  “Yes. I have food as part of me. In my country, in Belize, from when I was a girl, I helped with the cooking for a house full of people. I know good food. I know how to run a good kitchen.”

  At this point, Ali had disappeared through the kitchen doorway, wailing, “Jesus God, I don’t believe this!”

  A pipe in a brand-new wall had burst. Cold, slimy water was snaking around her ankles—and Ali, who hadn’t slept for days, was in tears.

  Ava, on the other hand, was tranquil. Wading through the dirty water, going toward the archway that separated the kitchen from the dining area—toward the earsplitting noise of pounding hammers and screaming drills. When Ava stepped into the archway, she called out two short sentences in fluent Spanish.

  Forty-five minutes later, the restaurant’s Latino construction crew had the broken pipe fixed and the kitchen floor clean and dry. The landscaper had returned with forests of yellow roses and was planting them in the walled garden. And Ava had made buttermilk biscuits and hot coffee.

  The biscuits were featherlight, warm in Ali’s mouth, melting with honey. The coffee, which was strong and bold, had been gentled with steamed milk and a dusting of cocoa powder. It was the first meal Ali had eaten all day. It tasted like heaven. When she’d finished, she sighed and told Ava, “Thank you.”

  And Ava said, “Please, you have a restaurant coming here… May I have a job?”

  Without a flicker of hesitation, Ali answered, “Of course.”

  • • •

  It had felt right to say yes to Ava. She’d come like an angel, bringing peace to chaos.

  Now, the dream had come true, the restaurant was a reality, and Ava was once again acting as Ali’s angel—nurturing her, protecting her.

  Ava looked into Ali’s eyes, seeing the pain. “I want to know what has happened. Come. We’ll go into Sofie’s nursery and close the door. And we will talk.”

  Sofie’s nursery was an area in the kitchen that had originally been a large, walk-in pantry, with an arched window at one end. Ava had completely transformed it, painting the walls the color of Meyer lemons and covering the floor with a buttery-green carpet. In place of the pantry’s heavy metal doors, Ava put sliding panels of woven bamboo that had the muted, ethereal gleam of sea glass. Then she’d furnished the little room with a playpen and a rocking chair, a crib, and shelves of baby toys. There was nowhere in the world Ali would rather be, but she told Ava, “I can’t go, not right now.”

  Ali was groping for a chair at the nearest table, too weak to take another step. Ava went to the sideboard to pour a cup of coffee.

  Ali’s thoughts were on Sofie, the child who was so much like Ava. The child Ali dearly loved.

  The first time Ali saw Sofie had been in the restaurant kitchen, early on a June morning. The door to the walled garden was open. The yellow roses were in full bloom. The air was cool and misty. And suddenly there had been the sound of music in it. The sound of that melodic greeting—“Hola!” And Ava was there in the doorway. Haloed by the morning sun and holding an oval basket. The small, exquisite ark in which her new baby was being carried into JOY.

  Ali had raced across the kitchen and hugged Ava, delighted and surprised to see her. “You gave birth a week ago. You should be home, resting.”

  Ava’s smile was radiant as she glanced down at the basket. “I am home. And this is my Sofie.”

  Ali looked into the basket, saw Sofie, and her heart melted. When she laid her finger on Sofie’s arm, it was as soft and warm as a sun-ripened peach. “I don’t want to ever take my eyes off her.”

  “You will never have to. Sofie will be yours to see whenever you want.” Ava put Sofi
e’s basket onto the wooden table at the far end of the kitchen and then slipped into a clean apron. “We are not here to visit. I am here to work.”

  In response to Ali’s puzzled look, Ava asked, “Why are you surprised by this? Of course Sofie will be here, with me, every day. I am her mother. How can I teach her the things she needs to learn from me if I am not with her?”

  “Are you having trouble finding a day-care provider?” Ali asked. “Because I could help you look for—”

  Ava’s laugh was lighthearted. “There is no problem with the finding. My landlady is a day-care mother…and she is in the apartment downstairs from me. Her name is Marcie. She is a very good person. Very nice.” Ava lifted Sofie from the basket, cradling her close to her breast. “But this is my baby. She is my flesh. My heart.”

  Ava gazed down at Sofie, then looked at Ali with a potent mix of tender love and unwavering determination. “Marcie is a Baptist from Kansas, and I am Catholic from Belize. She cooks tuna, in a casserole. I make green corn dumplings and tamales.” Ava flashed a rascal’s grin. “Sometimes, like my grandmother’s way, with chicken feet in the tamales.” After a quick beat, Ava asked, “Do you understand what I am saying?”

  Ali nodded and held her arms out. Ava transferred Sofie into Ali’s embrace.

  The kitchen had filled with cooks and waiters arriving for work, calling out their morning greetings in Spanish, and someone had hit the power button on the sound system. The room was alive with the rhythms of Latin music, the whoosh of the gas burners on the stoves, and the sharp smell of red peppers being thrown into hot pans.

  “My friend Marcie and I do not put the same tastes into our children’s mouths,” Ava said. “We do not sing the same songs into their ears. If Sofie spends more time each day with Marcie than with me, she will grow up strong and fine. But she will be more from Kansas than from Belize. She will know more of the heart of Marcie than of me.”

  Ali kissed Sofie on the crown of her head and returned her to the basket on the long wooden table. She made sure that Sofie was facing the open kitchen doorway. On the other side of that doorway was a sea of yellow roses.

  There was no more discussion. It was decided. The energy of Ali’s restaurant kitchen and the serenity of its walled garden would become the fragrant, lyrical landscape of Sofie’s babyhood. And Sofie would become a permanent part of Ali’s heart.

  “Being with Sofie will do you good,” Ava was telling Ali. “But first we must talk.” Ava put a cup of coffee on the table where Ali could reach it. “You are my dear friend. And something is terribly wrong. Let me help you.”

  Ali understood that Ava was offering unconditional love and acceptance. There was nothing she couldn’t say to Ava, nothing she couldn’t tell her. But Ali was too shredded to tell her story and explain what it had left in its wake. She only had strength enough to say, “I’m not a good person. I always thought I was, and I’m not.”

  Ali was talking about her anger toward Matt. She knew it was wrong to insist the rape was entirely his fault. But her anger was the only thing that was keeping her sane.

  Ava seemed to know Ali didn’t have the courage to clarify her comment about not being a good person. And to Ali’s relief, Ava didn’t ask any more questions. She put her hand over Ali’s, and they sat together. Peaceably. Until Ava said, “What is it that has befallen you?”

  Thinking about being attacked on the floor of her darkened apartment, Ali said, “It was the worst thing that’ll happen to me in my entire life.”

  She had no idea that the worst was yet to come.

  Morgan

  Morgan’s teeth were chattering—her feet felt like blocks of ice.

  She hit the ignition switch, turned up the heater, and huddled into her coat. She hadn’t expected a California winter to be so cold. An old man in a bulky jacket, the same person who had gone past the car earlier, was coming back toward it. He must’ve finished his morning walk and was heading home.

  As soon as he got alongside the passenger door, he leaned down, jerky and arthritic. Tapping the window, squinting in at Morgan. “You been here a mighty long time. You got engine trouble?”

  Fighting a skull-splitting headache, Morgan strained to reach across the passenger seat and lower the window. “I was…um…waiting for a friend.”

  “Is that so?” The old man scanned the emptiness of Morgan’s car, checked the emptiness of the street, then looked at Morgan with suspicion. “Sorry you’re sittin’ in a parked car, all alone on Christmas Day. But you best go on home. Get out of the cold.”

  What she was being told was that this old man’s next move would be to call the police. Morgan closed the window and shifted the car into Drive. While she pulled away from the curb, she watched the old man, and the front yard of Ali’s house, disappear into the distance.

  Morgan had been parked outside Ali’s home since dawn—her eyes half-open, hair uncombed, her lips cracked and dry. Even though she was steadily drugging herself with sleeping pills, she hadn’t slept in days. The only thing that had kept Morgan awake enough to make the drive had been her anger, and her hope.

  After standing by and letting Matt shove Morgan through a doorway, bouncing her off a wall like sack of garbage, Ali hadn’t called or texted. Hadn’t reached out to Morgan in any way.

  Morgan had come here half hoping for Ali to look out the window, see her, and invite her in for Christmas. She’d also come half hoping to find a way to hurt Ali for allowing her to be tossed through that doorway—then abandoning her.

  But what to do? Take a can of spray paint and scrawl Bitch across Ali’s pristine front door? Or maybe stand in the yard with a bullhorn, broadcasting to the neighbors who Ali really was: a cheating wife and a sister who was cruel and disloyal?

  Or should it be something bigger? Something that would put a final stop to the endless battle between herself and her twin. Should she set fire to 76 Paradise Lane? Burn it to the ground with Ali in it?

  Morgan drove away from her sister’s home and into the void that was Christmas Day, with no idea what she should do. Or what she wanted to do. Or what she might do without meaning to.

  Ali

  Ali came out of a deep sleep, eyes wide, frightened by a dream.

  Snow-white silk pajamas. A room made of white tiles. Clear water in a crystal bowl. Transforming into blood, rumbling like a volcano. And the blood spinning into a dark, thick funnel. Splattering, heavy and wet, onto the white silk of the pajamas.

  It was the soaking, sticky feel of the blood that woke Ali. Leaving her bolt upright in bed—screaming.

  When the scream was gone, she lay down again. Shivering. The dream was how she saw herself. Bloodied, torn apart, and dirty. It was the reason she was so adamant about keeping the rape a secret. She’d always been the golden girl, shining and perfect. And she was afraid if anyone knew what had happened, she’d be seen as tarnished, less wholesome, less lovable.

  Other than her one trip to the restaurant, Ali hadn’t left the house in the three and a half weeks since the attack. She’d stayed hidden, letting all the phone calls go to voice mail and then having Matt return the calls with a rehearsed story about Ali having the flu, which was always followed with a quick good-bye.

  After almost a month of hiding, Ali was incredibly lonely, staring at the phone, wanting it to ring. Wanting it to be Morgan. From the moment she left Ali’s house the day after the rape, Morgan had maintained an unbroken silence. She had cut Ali off completely, something she’d never done before.

  Having that silence still there, on this particular morning, was killing Ali. She had truly believed this was when Morgan would come back. Because it was Christmas. Ali and Morgan had never had a Christmas morning when they didn’t communicate with each other—and Morgan had never spent Christmas on her own, away from family and Rhode Island.

  Ali knew without a doubt that her sister was as lonely as she was
. She could feel it in her bones. Yet she continued to lie in the middle of her bed, unable to reach for the phone.

  For the first time in their lives, Ali didn’t have the strength to rescue Morgan.

  The rape had put Ali emotionally underwater and held her there.

  She was in the process of drowning.

  • • •

  Ali finally came downstairs a little before noon, wearing red-and-white polka-dot pajamas and with her hair gathered in a loose ponytail. She was wandering through half-empty rooms where the furniture, most of it factory new and still mummy-wrapped in plastic, was scattered at crazy angles. Chairs and tables abandoned where the strangers who delivered them had left them.

  Her reflection in one of the curtainless windows startled her—showed how vacant she looked. What happened that night in the apartment had drained the life out of her.

  Today is Christmas, and it’s so different from last Christmas, she thought. Our first Christmas as a married couple. It was like being in heaven. Matt and I were in the apartment, and it was still dark when I woke up. Matt had gotten out of bed to light dozens of cream-colored candles. He put them in every room. On every shelf, every tabletop. In every corner. He made cranberry waffles shaped like Christmas stars and brought them to me on a tray, with a pitcher of warm maple syrup that smelled like home, like the holidays.

  We had breakfast in bed—and I told him, “I’m in love with the most magnificent man in the world.” When we got out of bed, we went into the living room and sat on the floor, surrounded by the tree lights and the flickering candles. Matt gave me a silver charm bracelet. The charms were tiny kitchen things…little whisks and spoons hardly bigger than eyelashes. It was the most beautiful present anyone ever gave me. Matt and I stayed beside the Christmas tree all morning. Nestled in each other’s arms. Letting our kisses carry us into sleep…our lovemaking drowsy and tender.