Two Sisters: A Novel

by Mary Hogan

  In pouty silence Muriel followed her sister to the end of the public beach, so far from the Snack Shack and the parking lot that no one else was around. Large shiny boulders were stacked up on top of one another and curved around a sandy nook. By now Muriel’s shoulders were pink hot. The center part in her limp hair was singed. Her nose felt as if it had been scraped by sandpaper. At least it was cool in the shade of the boulders.

  “Tada,” Pia said, standing triumphantly. “I have a surprise for you.”

  “Mama said you’d take me swimming.” A headache was beginning to form behind her eyes.

  “I will. After.”

  “After what?”

  “I want to take your picture. Help me dig a hole.”

  Pia dropped to her knees and began to grab handfuls of dirt. Muriel stood there and blinked. “Just stand there, Muriel. God.”

  “Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain.”

  From out of nowhere, a straw-haired boy in Hawaiian swim trunks and a loose T-shirt appeared atop the boulder pile. “Sweet,” he said, flying off the rocks like Batman and diving to the ground to help Pia dig the hole. They looked like two Great Danes after a bone, all legs and spewing sand. Both teens glanced at each other, but said nothing. Their foreheads were shiny. The boy lifted his shirt off over his head and Pia looked directly at his smooth brown chest. They smelled like beach: suntan oil and fresh sweat. Timidly, Muriel knelt down to help. She disliked the feel of sand beneath her fingernails.

  “Use your whole arm,” the boy said, slightly breathless. “It’s faster.”

  Soon enough, there was a hole in the damp sand nearly a yard deep and two feet wide. A human shoe box. Wiping her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand, Pia caught her breath long enough to say, “Hop in.”

  Muriel scrambled to her feet. “You hop in.”

  “We dug it for you, Muriel. It’s pint size.”

  She liked the sound of that. Pint size. Still, with one foot jutted out in defiance, Muriel gripped her elbows and didn’t move one inch. Her cheeks were the color of cherries. Her hair hung in ropes. The waves sounded like faint cymbal crashes behind her. “Mama said you’d take me in the waves.”

  Pia groaned and Muriel set her jaw. The boy looked at her sister and she looked back at him. Shrugging, Pia sat on her heels and nonchalantly brushed sand off her bare hands. “No biggie,” she said. “I thought it would be a cool photo. If you want to be a baby and go in the waves, fine. Seems to me it would be more fun to take a picture of my sister that we could keep and remember forever.”

  Muriel felt her lower lip quiver.

  “Fine with me. Be a baby.”

  Muriel blinked back a rising tear.

  “Waah, waah, waah. Muriel is a big, fat baby.”

  She hopped down into the hole. Thigh deep inside the earth, the wet sand felt blessedly cool on Muriel’s hot legs. Its molasses color looked like brown sugar. “Kneel,” Pia commanded. Muriel hesitated until Pia glared at her for so long she relented and dropped to her knees. Cold grit pressed into her skin and compressed her bare legs. It felt good against her sunburned shoulders. Her head was level with the ground.

  “A perfect fit,” said the straw-haired boy, who seemed in no hurry to go wherever it was he was headed when he first showed up. Muriel noticed a thin stripe of white skin just above the elastic band of his swim trunks. Fine dark hairs clustered around his belly button.

  “Hey, Pia, look!” Muriel squealed, hoping to improve Pia’s darkened mood. “Can you see my toes? Can you? They’re all dug into the dirt.”

  Pia smiled and Muriel beamed. The two teens then bulldozed the sand back into the hole with both hands and forearms. As wet dirt plopped onto the backs of her calves, Muriel giggled. “It tickles.”

  The boxy hole filled up fast, up to Muriel’s waist in less than a minute. Sphinxlike, she rested her elbows on the sand shelf while Pia and the boy filled in the rest. The damp sand embraced her whole body in a chilled hug. It smelled almost like cookie dough, earthy chocolate and vanilla. It felt good. “This sure will be a funny picture.”

  “Careful,” Pia said, “don’t get sand in her eyes.”

  “Careful,” Muriel parroted back, “don’t get sand in my eyes.”

  In minutes, Muriel was no more than a head sitting directly on the sand. The straw-haired boy gently patted the earth beneath her chin. Muriel gazed up at him and he smiled at her, his white teeth ridged along the edges, his tanned fingers pink along the cuticle line. Sealing the sand around her neck, he tapped his fingers all the way around. Pia smoothed the rest with the bottom of her bare foot. Chuckling, the boy said, “She looks like a soccer ball.” Muriel laughed, cracking the sand slightly. The straw-haired boy brought a handful of wet sand from the base of the rocks to repair it. He sprinkled it like salt, then tamped it down with his suntanned hands. Muriel felt special, literally the center of Pia’s attention as well as the boy’s. This is going to be the best picture ever, she said to herself. Only then did she notice that no one had a camera. Must be somewhere behind the rocks, she thought. Must be.

  With the cool sand hugging her body, the hot sun no longer burned. Muriel felt safe and cozy, as if she were a fragile gift packed in Styrofoam. Pia pulled a tiny comb out of her bikini top and gently untangled her sister’s fine brown hair, fanning it out the back like an Elizabethan collar.

  “You look beautiful,” she said and Muriel nearly burst into tears.

  “I’m going to get the camera.”

  Ah. So there was a camera after all.

  “I’ll go with you.” Smirking, the boy circled to the front of Muriel’s line of sight and quipped, “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “No way,” she said, laughing so hard the sand cracked again. This time, no one repaired it.

  Behind her head Muriel heard the swish, swish of her sister’s footsteps in the sand and mini grunts as she climbed up the rocks with the boy. Her neck couldn’t swivel enough to see them go. Was the camera all the way back at the cottage?

  At sand level, the beach looked like the nubby blanket on Logan’s bed. Little hills rose up like folds of fabric. Some grains of sand were white, some black. From that vantage point the beach looked like a mix of salt and pepper. If the air hadn’t smelled faintly of fish, she might have taken a lick. With each breath, Muriel saw grains of sand hop away from her nose. When she pursed her lips and blew, she felt like the wind itself, capable of stirring up a mini hurricane. But she didn’t dare disturb the sand much. Muriel breathed evenly, in and out, careful not to cause another crack. She wanted everything perfect for Pia when she returned to take the picture they would keep and remember forever.

  In the distance, the rhythmic sound of waves swelling and breaking made her sleepy. When she closed her eyes, Muriel imagined foamy white bubbles surging forward. Try as they might to grip the sand, the ocean would always suck them back. Silver-dollar shells would be deposited on the shore, their starfish patterns intact. Spidery sand crabs would suddenly find themselves homeless, scrambling for shelter after a wave dissolved their sandy caves. How close was the water? It was hard to see from her flattened vantage point. Really, she should have thought to look while she was standing up. She knew it was far down the beach, but how far exactly? And were the louder waves bigger than the softer ones? Could a really big one reach her soccer-ball head? Suddenly she remembered a sand igloo she’d built last year when their family came to this very same beach. She’d been sure it was far enough back, but a wave reclaimed it nonetheless.

  Deep within her sand vault, Muriel felt her heart pump. A few hard beats at first, the rhythmic sound of a bass drum. Then the thumping grew louder, until her heart seemed to pump in her ears. She tried to listen for extra-loud waves, but the sounds inside her body were as loud as the ocean. Soon it seemed like waves were crashing one after the other, closer and closer.

  “Pia?” Trying not to mess up the perfect arc of her combed hair, Muriel slowly swiveled her neck as far as it would go. “Pia
? Do you have the camera yet?”

  Wasn’t the cottage all the way at the other end of the beach? Why hadn’t she brought the camera with her? Who was that boy anyway? Do sand crabs ever scamper up to the rocks? Were big crabs hiding in the rocks right now, waiting to come out and crawl on her head?

  “Pia?”

  Like gathering debris in a funnel cloud, Muriel’s panic started with loose bits of untethered worry then built up speed until a knotted, swirling mass of terror sucked her into its vortex. She imagined all manner of clacking sea creatures crawling over her head, pinching her earlobes with their spiky claws. Plucking her eyelashes out one by one. A starfish would wrap its five points around her face, suffocating her. A loose jellyfish tentacle would rope around her neck. One giant wave—only one—could drown her completely.

  No longer concerned about her perfectly fanned-out hair, Muriel frantically twisted her neck left and right, struggling to free herself. Grains of sand scattered beneath her nose like skittering ants. Her chest burned. She strained to move any body part—a big toe, a pinky, anything—but only the slightest motion was possible. Not nearly enough to free herself. The wet sand had cemented her in the hole.

  “Pia!”

  Knowing her big sister would call her a baby if she cried, Muriel clamped her teeth shut each time a whimper escaped. She tried to sound brave. “Pia? Could you please come back?” But it was no use. Tears rolled down her cheeks in thick drops. Guttural sobs boiled up from her intestines. Snot coated her upper lip. Before she could stop it, Muriel howled like a wild animal, caught in an ambush trap. “Out! Out! Get me out!”

  Behind her, Muriel suddenly heard a sound on the rocks. “Pia?” Through trembling, snot-shiny lips, she quickly tried to blow the sand smooth. She faced front. Her sister would be mad when she saw so many cracks. “Please, Pia, could you let me out? I want to get out now please.”

  Silence.

  “Pia?”

  The sound wasn’t Pia after all. Perhaps it was a sea breeze dislodging a pebble, or a trickle of water from an ocean pool in the rocks. Maybe it really was a full-size crab snapping its claws on its way down to Muriel’s soccer-ball head. She never knew for sure. The moment she realized her savior wasn’t there, the only discernible noise was Muriel’s full-throttle, white-eyed screaming. Help! Help! Helllp!

  At last, ruddy and dusty, Pia and the straw-haired boy flew down from the rocks and dropped to the ground digging like two street dogs at the dump. Sand flew everywhere. Muriel never stopped screaming.

  “Help me! Help me! Help me!”

  “Shhh,” Pia said. “Shhh. Shhh.” But Muriel was unable to stop. She didn’t even understand what Pia was talking about. Her feral screaming belonged to someone else. She had no control over it whatsoever. Even after she was lifted out of the hole—damp, dirty, hunched, and shaking—with Pia’s hand cupped over her mouth, she could hear the hoarse shrieking in her head. Help! Help! Help me please.

  “It’s okay now,” Pia cooed, hugging her little sister’s trembling body. “I’m here. It’s okay.”

  The boy gave Pia a wide-eyed look; she returned it and added a little nod. He grabbed his shirt and scrambled back up the rocks to disappear in the same manner he’d arrived. Gently Pia said to her sister, “We’re going in the waves now. Wanna go in the waves?”

  Muriel shook her head. “I want to go home.”

  “Okay.” Taking her sister’s hand, Pia silently walked the full length of the beach back to their mother’s umbrella. Neither uttered a single sentence the whole way. Muriel’s head hung on her neck. She softly whimpered with each exhale, sniffed sand into her nose. Before they reached the towel island where Lidia lay asleep, Pia stopped and kneeled on the sand in front of her little sister, holding both her arms firmly.

  “You’re a big girl, right?”

  Muriel’s head felt like a bowling ball dangling on the end of her neck.

  “Muriel?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. Big girls can keep secrets. That’s what makes them grown up. And you’re a big girl now, right?”

  Muriel nodded again.

  “So not a word about this to Mama. Promise?”

  “Okay.”

  “Say it.”

  “I promise.”

  “That’s the second rule about being a big girl. You never break your promise. No matter what. Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Good.”

  Muriel, being Muriel, kept her promise. She never told anyone. Not a word, not a soul. Not ever.

  Chapter 4

  A HALLOWEEN PARTY in Pawtucket? At the home of a woman he’d met in a movie line? Owen Sullivant had every intention of tossing the invitation in the trash. It was absurd. He didn’t even know the woman. How had she found him anyway? They’d never spoken again that night, though they had exchanged weighted glances in the murky light of the movie theater and again in the lobby on the way out. While Madalyn prattled on about Warren Beatty (“Does the man even own a comb?”), Owen felt heat radiate across the side of his face. Turning, he saw Lidia by the drinking fountain. Her dark eyes were bark beetles boring into his skull. Their intensity startled him. Excited him, too, frankly. He felt a stirring that had long been iced. Her waist was so tiny he could probably wrap both hands around it. Easily, he could lift her on top of him, feel her blond hair spill onto his face. It probably smelled like raspberries or vanilla or one of those expensive shampoos he saw at the drugstore next to the tar-infused one he bought for his dandruff.

  That night on Madalyn’s pull-out sofa, Owen made love so energetically Madalyn remarked, “Goodness! I should have worn this perfume last Saturday night.” God forgave him for sex before marriage, Owen had long ago decided. Surely He could absolve him of having sex with one woman while imagining another? And for the little white lie he told Madalyn about fumigating his apartment for ants. How could he conjure up Lidia’s fruity shampoo with Madalyn’s hair spray smell all over his pillow?

  The day the Halloween party invitation arrived in the office mail, Owen nearly tossed it right away. A fleeting fantasy was one thing, reality was quite another, replete as it was with effort and misunderstanding. Best to leave it be. It was the prudent choice. Surprised he was, then, to find himself tucking Lidia’s invitation in his shirt pocket, pulling it out several times a day to read it from beginning to end. Once he even held the card up to his nose and inhaled, as if he might smell the scent of her fingerprints.

  Never, not once, did he intend to go to the party. The very idea was ludicrous. On Halloween night, in fact, having told Madalyn he was visiting his parents, Owen planned a quiet evening alone in his apartment. He’d even bought a bag of mini Snickers on the off chance that neighborhood kids holding open pillowcases might ring his bell. There he sat on his couch, listlessly thumbing through TV Guide, perfectly satisfied with his decision to stay home. He mulled over supper choices: Pan-frying the strip steak he had in the fridge? A giant bowl of popcorn with parmesan cheese? Suddenly feeling a tad frowzy, he shelved the dinner decision until after he showered and shaved for the second time that day. Briefly, he considered putting his work clothes back on, but there was a freshly laundered shirt in his closet—still draped in plastic—next to tan slacks he’d bought the week before at Sears. The thought of trousers that had never been worn by anyone else pleased him. There was nothing like a factory press. The way the reverse pleats lay so flat against the pockets. Almost robotically, he donned clean underwear and socks and stepped into his new slacks. The zipper tugged slightly, but it would loosen with use. And when he tore open the plastic covering encasing his ironed white shirt, the steamy smell of the Chinese laundry made him feel faintly superior.

  “There,” he said, combed and dressed. As if his tidy appearance was a job well done. Even his toes felt satisfied nestled into their Sunday socks.

  Owen padded over to the front window of his second-story apartment. He looked right and left as far as he could without opening the windo
w to the October chill. Not a soul was on the street. No youngster in a skeleton suit or teen with a fake ax protruding from his skull. As with previous years, the neighborhood kids knew they could score more candy on another street, one with fewer darkened apartment windows. Oh well, Owen told himself, no one could accuse him of not being prepared.

  Turning away from the window, Owen walked to the far end of his apartment, next to the still-steamy bathroom, and opened his linen cupboard. Ferreting through a stack of clean sheets, he pulled out a white pillowcase and carried it to the kitchen table. There, he smoothed it flat and used the desk scissors to cut a long arch into one side. He then positioned the cut pillowcase on his head in a flaccid attempt to approximate Lawrence of Arabia. Careful he was to depress the top and secure the forehead with an old tie so as not to resemble a Klan member in any way.

  Still content with his decision to stay home, Owen left his apartment and got into his car and drove the mile and a half into Pawtucket, just to see. A nice bottle of red wine rolled back and forth on the passenger seat. It was easy to spot the Czerwinski home. Their front maple trees were draped in cottony fake cobwebs. They’ll regret that tomorrow morning, Owen thought. Lit carved pumpkins with maniacal expressions lined the brick walkway leading to the front door. He found himself impressed with the knife work. Did an artist live on the premises? A butcher, perhaps? At the door, Owen tapped his middle knuckle against the shiny black wood. Then he shook his pillowcase-covered head and scoffed. The music inside was so loud, no one would ever hear him.

  “Hello?” Wine bottle in hand, he stepped into the foyer and stated, “I have an invitation.”

  Nobody paid the slightest attention. The dimly lit living room off to the right was a pulsating mass of flesh and flashy costumes—more than one Boy George, he noted, and several Madonnas. The even darker dining room to the left seemed full of legs and laps. At the exact moment Owen muttered under his breath, “What the hell am I doing here?” Lidia appeared from out of nowhere, pink cheeked and grinning.