The Other Sister

by Dianne Dixon

  Ali was so pale Kim thought she was going to pass out. “You sure you want to hear the rest of this?”

  Ali mouthed the word yes but didn’t make any noise.

  Kim couldn’t look at her. It was too sad—how scared Ali was. Kim kept her attention on the beer bottle while she said, “Mom got mental-patient violent, screaming that Matty had stolen her inheritance, saying stuff like, ‘Where would the little bastard have gotten all that money unless he weaseled it out of my father before my old man died?’ By the time she found Matt’s info on his college’s website, she was convinced he’d cheated her out of millions. That’s when she sent him the email.”

  “What email?” Ali asked. “What did it say?”

  “It was just one sentence: ‘You’re not going to get away with this.’ Matty wrote back and asked Mom what she wanted. She said, ‘To make you pay.’”

  Kim got up and started pacing; she couldn’t tell the rest of this sitting still. “A few hours later, Matty was outside our door. He only had the chance to knock once before that door flew open and Mom hit him so hard she knocked one of his teeth loose. He tried to cover his face, but she kept clawing at him with her fingernails, kept digging them into his skin, raking them down his forearms, leaving these bloody trails and…”

  Kim clamped her hand over her mouth, stifling a moan. The look in Matt’s eyes while he was being brutalized by his mother had been awful. And, for a minute, it wasn’t just a memory. Kim was reliving it… Matt lunging at their mother, Althea. Slamming her against the wall. Her head bouncing off the plaster with a sharp, cracking sound. The rage between Matt and Althea freezing Kim with terror while she watched Matt yank their mother away from the wall. And shove her backward, out the open door. Sending her scuffling, barefoot, across the matted carpet of that dingy hotel corridor.

  “I was ashamed of him,” Kim said. “In spite of everything, it seemed totally wrong for a son to treat his mother like that.” She thought for a moment, then looked at Ali. “But I was the one that was totally wrong. Instead of being ashamed of Matty, I should’ve been trying to save him. I was giving a sacredness to Althea Kenner she didn’t deserve. She wasn’t Matty’s mother. Women like her? Their claim to motherhood ends with the push that shoots their slime-covered kid down the birth canal.”

  Ali cringed and looked away, leaving Kim alone. And Kim had been alone for way too long. She needed somebody to listen—to understand her story, and Matt’s.

  “After Matty shoved Althea through the open door, he ran out in the hall to help her. Mom was fighting him, hitting him. And while he was getting her back into the room, she was spitting at him and kicking him…screaming, ‘You stole my money! You turned my own father against me. You’re a thief!’”

  “And what were you doing?” There was a hint of accusation in Ali’s tone.

  “I was pleading with him. ‘Matty, don’t hurt her. She’ll calm down in a minute. She’ll calm down.’” Kim was doing her best not to cry. “When he heard me call him Matty, I could see this longing in him. It was like, after so many years of us being apart, he was back with his baby sister again, and he wanted to say he loved me.

  “But then something changed, and I could tell he was looking at me and thinking, ‘This person isn’t the little girl I remember. She’s a woman I don’t know.’ Which I guess is why Matt stayed quiet. After that, the two of us wrestled our mother, kicking and screaming, into a chair and tied her down with a bedsheet.”

  Kim was remembering every detail… The violence as she and Matt wrestled their mother into a chair. Althea was almost six feet tall, had just turned fifty…and the fight she gave them was a mash-up of an athlete’s muscle and the unbelievable strength some people have when they’re batshit crazy. At one point, Althea broke free, roaring out of the chair, screaming at Matt, “I’m the last of the Kenners, not you. My father’s money belongs to me!”

  Kim watched their mother grab at Matt’s throat, trying to strangle him. Almost immediately, Althea exhausted herself and flopped back into the chair. She left a trail of painful-looking bruises on Matt’s neck. He was gasping for breath as he told her, “The only money Grandfather gave me was for my college tuition.”

  Althea glared at him—but the fight had gone out of her. She was wheezing, groggy, as she mumbled, “Bullshit. He was worth millions.”

  Matt pulled a tissue from a box on a table beside the bed and slowly wiped the film of sweat from their mother’s face and the bubbles of spit from the corners of her mouth. “Grandfather was proud of having made every penny on his own,” Matt told her. “When he was dying, he said he wanted me to have the same opportunity, and he was leaving his money to charity…all of it. I didn’t have any problem with that.”

  Althea mumbled “bullshit” again and drifted off into a muttering daze.

  Matt sat at the end of the bed, looking at Kim, defeated. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s high,” Kim said. “And she’s crazy. It’s the same thing that’s always been wrong with her.”

  “She should be in a hospital.”

  “She just ran away from one.” Kim was stroking her mother’s tangled hair—still needing her, still loving her—saying, “It’s okay, Momma. We’re going to take care of you.”

  Then Kim had fixed her cornflower-blue eyes on Matt’s lighter-blue ones and asked, “Isn’t that right, Matty?”

  That’s when Kim saw something sad inside Matt. A little sealed-off corner where he’d never stopped wanting to treasure his mother and was still yearning to be treasured by her.

  For three days, Kim stayed in that room while Matt never left Althea’s side. He held her down while she raved. He watched over her while she slept. And in the moments when she was rational enough, he talked gently to her about her need for medical care.

  Finally, around eight o’clock on the morning of that third day, the worst of Althea’s rages stopped—and around noon, she agreed to go back to the hospital she’d run away from. Kim went down to the lobby, out onto the sidewalk, to flag down a cab. Matt stayed upstairs on the fourteenth floor with their mother.

  And that’s when it happened.

  Matt was in the bathroom, getting a glass of water, listening to Althea pacing and muttering outside the door. Then the muttering stopped, and there was the scraping sound of a window being raised. It was followed by an eerie quiet.

  In the time it took Matt to rush out of the bathroom, his mother was already crouched and grinning—perched on the sill of the open window.

  Althea murmured “Fuck you” as if she were saying it to someone who wasn’t quite real, someone only she could see. She did it calmly, the way she might’ve said “Good morning.” Then she threw herself backward.

  Matt made it to the window in time to reach out and grab hold of her wrists. But his mother’s full weight was already plummeting toward the sidewalk. The momentum of her fall, as she slipped out of his grasp, jackknifed Matt, slamming him forward and down onto the windowsill. Two raised strips of metal that spanned the grimy width of the sill sliced into Matt’s abdomen, just above his navel.

  The lacerations were painfully deep, laced with grit and filth. But the paramedics and police, who arrived within minutes, were focused on something else. Althea’s suicide. Nobody paid attention to the wounds that had been left on Matt.

  “I saw how much pain he was in. After the police and paramedics left. When he was arranging for the disposal of our mother’s body.” Kim’s face was hot with shame. “But when it was all over, when Matt tried to say good-bye to me, good-bye to his baby sister, I wouldn’t even look at him.”

  “Why?” Ali sounded appalled.

  Kim couldn’t raise her voice above a guilty whisper. “I was mad at him…for letting my mom die.”

  Ali

  “The only thing Matty’s guilty of is being the son of a selfish, crazy-ass druggie.” Kim said this w
hile she and Ali stood at the end of the driveway.

  As Ali opened the door of her rental car, Kim told her, “My brother has every right to be sick and twisted, but he isn’t. He’s a good man.”

  For each question that Kim’s story had answered, it had raised a dozen more. “Why didn’t you stay in contact with Matt after you were with him in New York?” Ali asked.

  Kim bit at her thumbnail, looking embarrassed. “I don’t know. I guess it’s because part of me still wants my mom.” She gave a quick, uncertain shrug. “I guess part of me is mad at Matt ’cause she’s gone…’cause he wasn’t strong enough to hang on to her when she went out that window. Pretty stupid, huh? Sounds like I’m looking at Matty the same crappy way she did.”

  Kicking at a pebble, Kim told Ali, “I was there when Mom landed, y’know. I was right outside the hotel, trying to get a cab, so we could take her back to the hospital. I was close enough to see her face coming toward me and hear the god-awful noise she made when she hit the sidewalk.”

  Ali wondered how anyone could survive such an experience.

  Kim calmly told her, “I know it’d be just as easy to be mad at Althea, instead of Matt. She’s the one who decided to jump out a window and turn herself into an omelet right in front of her own kids, but…” Kim’s eyes were swimming with tears. “But I loved her. She was my mom.” Again, Kim bit at her thumbnail. “That sounds crazy, I guess.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Ali said. “I know what you mean.” And Ali did know. She understood the confusion of loving someone you were capable of hating. The helplessness of being unable to stop loving them. Because their blood flowed through your veins.

  Ali had lived that kind of logic-defying love.

  It was her bond with Morgan.

  • • •

  Watching the Arizona desert recede beneath the wings of the plane, Ali thought about Matt’s mother’s suicide and Matt’s grim childhood—and she realized Matt had never stopped fighting for something that she, and his mother and sister, had never given him credit for. He’d never stopped fighting to be a hero. And for a moment, Ali loved Matt for that.

  But then a man across the aisle pulled a brown briefcase out of the overhead compartment, and Ali’s thoughts went to the suitcase in the attic, to the question of who could have put it there.

  And her feeling of love for Matt was riddled with uncertainty.

  • • •

  During the flight from Phoenix, like everyone else on the plane, Ali had her phone switched off. As she walked into the terminal, switching it on, a call came in.

  It was Matt, sounding worried. “Al, I just picked up the message you left me. I could hear in your voice…there’s a problem.”

  Ali left the flood of passengers surging toward the exits and found a chair in an empty boarding area—while Matt told her, “Your message said there’s something in the house you want to talk to me about?”

  “Yes, I—”

  Ali suddenly realized that he was returning a call she made before she’d left for Phoenix, when the only thing she’d wanted to talk about was the suitcase in the attic. Now, there was so much more. Now, she had met his sister and discovered the truth about the three days he’d gone missing, and the appalling things that had happened to him as a child. These weren’t things she could handle in a phone call.

  “I need you to come home. It’s important” was all Ali said.

  It was all she needed to say.

  In two days, Matt would be back from Australia.

  Morgan

  “The scary part is…my sister’s attacker still hasn’t been caught.”

  It had been too long. Things like her job and Ralph and time reconnecting with Ali had kept Morgan busy twenty-four seven. It was good, finally, to have Sam at the other end of an early-morning phone call. There was so much she needed to talk to him about.

  And at this particular moment she was telling him, “The thing that’s driving me crazy is that whoever hurt Ali is still here, somewhere nearby.”

  Sam’s voice was fainter than usual. But, as always, calm and compassionate. “How do you know he’s still in close proximity?”

  “I can feel it. I can just feel it.”

  Morgan pressed the phone to her ear, overwhelmed with guilt. “Sam, how could I have been so completely blind to what my sister was going through? The night she was attacked, why didn’t I sense she was in danger? And the day after, when she must have been in agony, I screamed at her. I told her I hoped whatever happened was something awful, because that’s what she deserved.”

  “Why do you think you were so closed off back then?” Sam asked.

  “I was angry. It was completely different for me then. I wasn’t listening to anything other than what was in my own head. Now. With you, I’m open to everything you tell me, and grateful for it…but back then, when my mom, or Ali, tried to help me see stuff I was missing, all I’d hear was criticism, and it made me furious.”

  “Why are things different now?”

  “Maybe, with us, I was able to hear what you were saying because we started out as strangers. I didn’t have a history with you. I got to a place with Mom and Ali where I was so mad at them I couldn’t think straight. I was jealous because I thought Ali was always getting life handed to her on a platter. And I was angry with my mother because I thought she loved Ali more than she loved me. Every time Mom tried to come close, I pushed her away. Eventually, I think she was so hurt and frustrated she didn’t know how to deal with me anymore.”

  Morgan took a deep breath. When she let it out, she said, “Sam, up until recently, I spent most of my time feeling cheated…keeping track of what I thought everybody owed me. I treated my mother like she was an enemy. And I treated my sister like she’d committed a crime against me and I had the right to be horrible to her.”

  Sam’s reply was unhurried and kind. “We’re all works in progress, my friend. From the moment we’re born, we’re continually in the process of becoming…learning and growing. As long as you don’t stop and give in to who you are, and you keep reaching toward who you could be, then you’re on the path to becoming your best self, the person you were created to be.”

  “What if I’ve already spent too much time being less than my best? What if I’m fooling myself and it’s too late to become a truly good person?”

  “It’s never too late.”

  “I don’t know where I’d be without you, Sam.” Morgan’s voice was soft, almost embarrassed. “And yet I’m always wondering who you are.”

  She didn’t want to go too deep, ask too much, change anything between them, but she couldn’t help wanting to know more. And before she could stop herself she said, “Tell me about something you just love to do.”

  At the other end of the call—stillness.

  Then Sam’s voice, very quiet. “The speed of ski slopes and race cars and parachute jumps. There was a time when what I loved was speed.”

  “But you stopped loving it?”

  “No. Never.”

  Morgan waited for an explanation. She didn’t get one.

  Eventually Sam said, “But life is the process of becoming. It starts with your first breath and stays with you until your last. Just think of the power of it…being able to continually reach toward the light. The possibilities are infinite.”

  • • •

  Later that morning, around seven, Morgan left home—still thinking about her phone call with Sam. About the idea that every moment was a new opportunity to grow and change—the possibilities infinite.

  She arrived at work early, before anyone else. And went straight to her office computer. It had been a while since Morgan had posted on Facebook, and she decided it was time to reconnect. In her post, she talked about her job, and Ralph, and how she was settling into life in California. She also mentioned Ali’s attack, without giving any details,
saying only that a family member had suffered a terrible tragedy. What Morgan did describe in detail was the pain of the tragedy—and how much she wanted to help ease that pain.

  About an hour after Morgan arrived at the museum, her office door opened. Erin, the colleague who introduced Morgan to Ben Tennoff, peeked in. “Did Ralph like the organic dog treats?”

  “He’s a huge fan. Thanks for telling me about them.”

  This was one of the things Morgan loved about her new world—the connection she had with people, the shared interests and small talk, being a part of life, instead of apart from it.

  “How’s Max?” Morgan asked.

  “The vet says it’s just allergies. He’ll be fine. And in case Ralph’s interested, Max would love another playdate. Will you be bringing him to my barbecue? Don’t forget. It’s two weeks from this Saturday.”

  “I can’t wait. And yes…Ralph’s coming, too.”

  Erin smiled. Raised a questioning eyebrow. “How’s my cousin Ben? Is he still in DC?”

  Morgan nodded. “Yeah. He’ll be back soon though.”

  “And when he comes home…will you two be getting together?”

  “I think so.” Morgan ducked her head, blushing a little. She was looking forward to seeing Ben.

  “That’s great. You guys make a terrific couple.”

  Somewhere nearby, a door opened and closed. Erin glanced over her shoulder, then back at Morgan. “By the way, Mr. Dupuis wants to see you in his office.”

  Morgan was instantly on her feet, heading down the hallway.

  Mr. Dupuis, Morgan’s boss, was French and known for being punctual, polite, and impeccably dressed. His small office was Persian carpeted and oak paneled. A bowl of fresh gardenias was always on the windowsill. The scent in the room was theirs, heady and lush.

  Although Morgan sincerely liked Mr. Dupuis, she was also overwhelmed by him. As she perched on the Queen Anne chair at the side of his desk, Morgan was nervous.

  Mr. Dupuis gestured toward a table where there was a tray containing chilled bottles of Perrier. Morgan shook her head. “No thanks, I’m fine.”