Then I Met My Sister

by Christine Hurley Deriso

  Which means I got off easy, right?

  So why am I crying?

  God, Mom can still push all my guilt buttons. Why? Wasn’t 17.5 years of perfection enough for her? Aren’t I entitled to tell an occasional lie? Okay, so they aren’t so occasional these days, but maybe I’m making up for lost time. It seems the more right I did everything, the more Mom criticized me and kept upping the ante: “An A on your report card? But you made an A-plus last semester! What in God’s name is wrong with you?!?” Or: “First runner-up in Miss Corncob USA? Oh, the horrors! We’ll start training IMMEDIATELY for the next pageant! Snap to it, Shannon! Nothing but absolute perfection will ever be good enough for me!”

  But I’M feeling guilty now? Mom never once said to me, “Gosh, honey, I’ve been awfully hard on you, and I just want you to know: trophies or no trophies, honors or no honors, I think you’re great just the way you are.”

  Truly, I’d give my right arm to hear that.

  But I’ll never hear it. Maybe Mom’s the one who should feel guilty.

  I close the journal, squeeze it under my mattress, lie on my side and stare into space. My head is spinning from all the information Shannon has thrown at me. I wish she’d learned what I learned early on—there’s no pleasing Mom, so just take yourself out of the game. No beauty pageant equals no disappointment.

  But then I wince a little. God knows I was never cut out to be a beauty queen, but maybe some of the games I took myself out of were things I might actually have enjoyed … might actually have been good at. Who had the right idea? Shannon, for tap-dancing for Mom as long and as hard as she could, or me, for refusing to put on the tap shoes in the first place?

  As jolting as these thoughts are, my brain keeps going back to something else she wrote:

  Repeat after me: CHRIS IS NOT MY DAD.

  I pull the covers tighter under my chin. I can’t quite wrap my head around it, but I can’t wish it away, either.

  So who was she, Dad? Who was the other woman?

  Although I don’t think I want to know, I’m starting to realize I don’t have any choice. Shannon wants to tell me.

  Fifteen

  “Did my dad have an affair?”

  I’d planned on easing into the conversation, but it isn’t working out that way.

  Aunt Nicole’s face turns pale. Here she is, innocently opening the door of her flower shop on a sunny Monday morning, her crisp white smock tied with a bow at her waist, and I’m asking her about my dad’s affair before she can say hello.

  “Well, good morning to you, too, Summer.” She takes a deep breath, holds the door open and waves me inside.

  “Sorry,” I tell her. “I didn’t mean to freak you out. I just … I don’t know … I just need to know, and I can’t exactly ask my parents.”

  Aunt Nicole flips the CLOSED sign to OPEN and shuts the door. The bell jingles.

  She cocks her head toward the back of the store, and I follow her to the plaid loveseat in the workroom.

  “Sit,” she says. She chews on her bottom lip as we settle onto the sofa.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have given you that journal,” she says wearily, tossing her head back and staring at the ceiling.

  “It’s true. He did have an affair.” I say it matter-of-factly, knowing for sure now. It almost feels like a relief, like getting a diagnosis that confirms an awful disease but gives you the satisfaction of totally explaining your symptoms.

  “I am not having this conversation with you,” Aunt Nicole moans, covering her face with her hands.

  “Was it just a fling? Or was it really serious? How long did it last? Did Mom find out? And just one affair, right?” Oh, God. Maybe not.

  Aunt Nicole rubs the bridge of her nose, her eyes squeezed shut. “Here’s the thing,” she says. “You don’t need to know this. You shouldn’t know this. Kids aren’t supposed to know everything about their parents. Truly, Summer, if I had any idea Shannon wrote about that, I never would have …” She opens her eyes and looks at me warily. “But I’d rather you have the big picture than some out-of-focus little snapshot.” Then she turns wistful. “That Shannon,” she says dreamily. “Keeping us on our toes even now.”

  “The affair,” I prod her.

  Aunt Nicole opens her mouth to speak, shuts it, opens it again, then says, “Your father is a good man.”

  “Proceed,” I say dryly.

  “It’s funny,” she says, touching her chin with her index finger. “Your parents are so different—your mom so assertive and opinionated, your dad so quiet. Some people thought they were too different to make a good match, but I always thought he was good for her. He calmed her down.”

  I make a rolling motion with my hand.

  “Right. Anyway, your dad … he’s the kind of person everybody assumes is content because he never says much.” Her eyes suddenly lock with mine. “And I’m sure he is content, most of the time. He’s a simple guy. As long as his family is happy, he’s happy.”

  “Especially when he’s having an affair,” I observe, wishing my flat tone could quell the turbulence in the pit of my stomach.

  Aunt Nicole shakes her head. “It wasn’t like that. He’s not the kind of man to have affairs. She threw herself at him.”

  I swallow hard. “She.”

  Aunt Nicole blushes and rubs her hands together. “She was the church secretary. Your parents went to church back then. We all went to Mass together on Sundays—Uncle Matt and me, your family, Grandma and Grandpa—then we’d alternate houses for a potluck lunch.

  “Anyway, your dad would go back to the church after lunch so he could count the collection money. He did that for years, no big deal, until this twit moved into town and got a job as the church secretary.”

  “Who was she?” I ask, leaning closer.

  Aunt Nicole waves away the question, as if the woman’s identity is no more consequential than the amount of money in the collection basket. “I honestly don’t even remember her name. Donna, maybe? Dana? Whatever. It only lasted a couple of months, then she disappeared as quickly as she’d blown into town.”

  “How did Shannon find out?’” I ask.

  Aunt Nicole’s hand fumbles across her mouth. She stares at her lap. “She walked in on them, honey.”

  I suck in a breath.

  “They were just kissing,” Aunt Nicole adds quickly. “That might have been all they ever did. But Shannon was devastated. We were still finishing up dessert at my house and your mom realized your dad had forgotten his glasses, so Shannon brought them to him at the rectory. She came back to my house half an hour later, white as a sheet.”

  “Did she tell Mom?” I ask, my voice quavering now.

  Aunt Nicole shakes her head. “No. She didn’t say anything for days, not even to me. But it was just a matter of time before the whole church was talking about it. The rectory was locked when Shannon got there, and some lady on the landscaping committee was planting azaleas and let her in with her key. The two of them, Shannon and the azalea lady, walked in together, and …”

  Both of us stare at our hands. I hate Dad right now.

  “The azalea lady spread the word pretty quickly, and within a couple of weeks, it filtered down to your mother,” Aunt Nicole says. “Shannon had already told me by then. She realized the gossip was heating up and wanted to know how she could protect your mom.”

  “I thought that parents were supposed to protect their kids,” I mutter.

  Aunt Nicole’s eyes flood with sadness. “I know, honey. It was awful.”

  I sigh. “I already know how this story ends.”

  Her eyebrows crinkle. “What do you mean?”

  “I know my parents. I know Mom. I’m guessing that even while the whole church was gossiping about it, she was busy arranging the next yard sale and pretending it never happened. She probably called Dad at work the day she found out and reminded him to pick up a gallon of milk on his way home.”

  Aunt Nic holds a hand loosely over her mouth to cover a subt
le smile.

  “What?” I demand.

  She considers her words for a second, then says, “You really don’t know your mom as well as you think you do.”

  I lean in.

  “The first thing she did,” Aunt Nic says, “was kick your dad out of the house.”

  I gasp a little, mostly because I can’t imagine Dad without Mom. Sure, they can go whole days without uttering more than a sentence to each other, but they’re kind of symbiotic. I know Mom could do okay on her own, but Dad? He’d be like a plant without oxygen.

  “Where did he go?” I ask.

  Nic peers into space, trying to retrieve the memory in her head. “Your Uncle Phil’s, maybe? He started out in a motel, but that just lasted a few days. Then he moved in with his brother.”

  “In Charlotte?” I ask. “Two hours away?”

  She nods. “He commuted to work every day. He told your mom he didn’t want to waste any more money on a motel, that he wanted every spare cent of his paycheck to go to her and Shannon. He was so ashamed.”

  “I can’t imagine Dad without Mom,” I say.

  Aunt Nic nods. “He was really pitiful. As mad as we all were at him, we couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He was just … lost without his family.”

  I absently pick up a flower from the work table and finger a satiny petal. “So when did he move back in?” I ask.

  Aunt Nic thinks some more. “After about a month. I’m pretty sure … I don’t think your mom had really planned to kick him out for good. She just wanted to teach him a lesson.” Her eyes skitter away. “God, she was so upset that he put Shannon through that.”

  I swallow hard. Poor Shannon. No wonder she went off the deep end that summer. She must have been so confused, wondering if her whole life was one big fraud. Here she’d been expected to be perfect, but the people she’d trusted the most were nothing but phonies.

  My eyes lock with Aunt Nic’s again. “Did Mom ever confront the slut?”

  She laughs nervously. “Uh, yeah.”

  “What happened?” I persist.

  Nic shifts her weight and crosses her arms. “Your mom was going to confront her at church, but the priest convinced her not to. He said she’d turned in her resignation and was leaving town, and that your mom should just leave well enough alone, that she was too classy to stoop to that level anyhow.”

  “But … ?” I prod.

  Aunt Nic’s eyes sparkle. “But your mom and I ran into her in the grocery store. I saw her first. I tried to distract your mom by pulling her into another aisle, but she caught a glimpse of that frizzy orangy perm out of the corner of her eye. And then—standing ramrod straight and acting cool as a cucumber—your mother picked up an orange and walked over to the … well, okay, the slut. I got close enough to overhear her threatening to affix that orange in a certain orifice if she ever messed with your family again.”

  She giggles, but I’m too stunned to giggle back. “God, this is tacky,” I moan.

  Aunt Nic nods, still laughing lightly. “You don’t mess with Susanne’s family,” she says, then looks at me closer. “That goes for you, too, you know. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for you, nobody she wouldn’t protect you from.”

  I narrow my eyes. “So, my whole she-swept-it-under-the-rug theory … ?”

  Nic smiles and tousles a lock of my hair. “Yeah, that was a bit of a miscalculation, honey.”

  I smile back, plucking the petal off the rose. “I kinda like this side of Mom.”

  Sixteen

  Dad’s in the den checking golf scores on the computer when I get home from the flower shop that afternoon. A baseball game on TV drones in the background.

  “Hi, hon,” he says, without turning around.

  I study the back of his head, flecks of gray blended into golden-brown hair. He still has most of his hair, but it’s thinning. Otherwise, he still looks like what I always imagined a superhero would look like under the mask.

  He seemed like a superhero. I remember riding in the front seat of the car when I was little and the passenger door suddenly flying open while Dad was going sixty miles per hour on the interstate. I didn’t even have time to scream before Dad had swung his long arm over my chest, grabbed the handle with the tips of his fingers and pulled it shut. He never took his eyes off the road. He didn’t say anything about it—we just kept driving—but I felt safe. Dad’s heroism was so effortless that it didn’t even require commentary.

  Although Dad and I have never had any heart-to-hearts, he’s the one to toss me a sympathy glance when Mom starts nagging. He also likes to put little surprises—a pack of gum, a tube of lip gloss—in weird places where he knows I’ll eventually find them, like in one of my socks. I walked around all day in school once wondering why my sweatshirt felt like it was choking me before I realized Dad had put an apple in the hood when he was kissing me goodbye that morning. He never talks about the quirky stuff he does; he just does it, then gets a twinkly look in his eyes when he knows that I’ve noticed.

  I plop into the recliner, swiveling in Dad’s direction. His eyes stay glued on the computer screen for another moment or two, but I guess it’s pretty hard to concentrate when someone is staring at the back of your head, so he slowly turns to face me.

  “Hi,” I say.

  His hand bobs in the air. “Hi.”

  “Can you tell me something?” I ask.

  “Sure.”

  “Tell me something about Shannon.”

  His green eyes crinkle. “Something about Shannon …”

  “Right. Something I don’t already know.”

  To my astonishment, he doesn’t stall. Instead, he peers skyward, taps his chin, and says, “Hmmmm … something you don’t already know …”

  “Right,” I say.

  He smiles. “I used to call her Kerfluffle.”

  I smile to mask a stab of envy. Dad’s never had a nickname for me.

  “Where did that come from?” I ask, trying to sound breezy.

  He shakes his head, still smiling. “Who knows. I remember I lost her in the park once—well, I thought she was lost, but actually she was hiding—and I was dashing around calling, ‘Shannon! Shannon!’ Finally, I called, ‘Kerfluffle!’ and she popped her head out from behind a tree and said, ‘That’s the name I was waiting to hear!’”

  We laugh lightly.

  “She used to make me play Barbies with her,” Dad continues, his eyes soft. “She’d have some dialogue worked out in her head, and she’d get frustrated when I didn’t follow the script. She’d say, ‘Where do you want to go today, Ken?’ and I’d say, ‘The movies?’ She’d whisper, ‘The mall.’ Like we couldn’t have Barbie and Ken overhearing the stage directions. So I’d say, ‘The mall sounds good.’”

  My smile is genuine now. Dad looks ten years younger.

  “Did you and Shannon ever go to the mall together?” I ask.

  He wrinkles his nose. “I wasn’t much for shopping. That was something she and Mom would do together, like you and Mom do … well, like you and Mom would do, if you liked shopping. I guess you take after me, that way.”

  I lean closer and settle my chin on my hand. “How did Shannon take after you?”

  He peers past me. “In no way whatsoever. She was everything I wasn’t: bubbly, extroverted, witty, talented …” He clears his throat. “Of course, you’re all those things, too,” he says.

  My back arches and I fold my arms across my chest. “You don’t have to say that.” I sound icier than I’d intended. Oh God. I sound like Mom.

  Dad stares at his fingers. Dammit. I actually had him talking and now he’s shutting down.

  “Chinese, anyone?”

  Dad and I look up, alarmed. Mom has just breezed into the room without us noticing.

  “I picked up moo goo gai pan on my way home from work,” she says, rifling through the mail. “It’s in the kitchen.”

  Dad looks at me apologetically. He knows I want him to keep talking, but he’s so damned relieved he
doesn’t have to.

  Mom looks up from the mail to survey my jeans and T-shirt. “You went to work dressed that way?” she asks, curling her lip.

  “She looks fine,” Dad says, surprising both Mom and me.

  Mom raises an eyebrow at him, then turns her attention back to me. “I talked to Ms. Beacham today.”

  “Mmmmmm.”

  “Your counselor,” Mom qualifies.

  I don’t say anything, but I guess my expression says duh, because Mom turns snappish.

  “Don’t have that attitude with me, young lady.”

  I contain the urge to roll my eyes as she pauses to let the words sink in.

  “Anyway,” she finally continues, “I called her because your SAT scores were in my email this morning.”

  I furrow my brow. “Your email?”

  “Yes, my email, Summer. It’s my test, after all. I paid for it.”

  “Well, how did you do?”

  Even Dad chuckles slightly at that one, but Mom’s withering glance stops him cold.

  “Actually, you did quite wonderfully,” Mom says, but her tone is accusatory. “You scored in the seventieth percentile nationwide in math, which you’re always claiming is your worst subject. And the ninety-fourth percentile nationwide on the verbal section. The ninety-fourth percentile, Summer!”

  Dad and I exchange confused glances.

  “That’s good, right?” I ask cautiously.

  “Yes, it’s good!” Mom snaps.

  Okay, now I’m seriously confused.

  “It’s better than good, Summer. It’s exceptional. You’re exceptionally smart. Do you get that?”

  Oh. I’m starting to get it.

  “So there are no excuses whatsoever for a young lady who scores in the ninety-fourth percentile nationwide to be squeaking by in school with barely a C average!”

  Dad taps the computer keyboard idly. “Let’s not talk about Summer’s grades right now,” he says quietly. “Let’s just enjoy how well she did on the SATs.”