Two Sisters: A Novel

by Mary Hogan

  “May I help you?” A man buttoning his suit jacket appeared from the hallway.

  “I know the Pia Winston viewing doesn’t start for a while,” Muriel said. “I’ve come from New York.”

  The director opened his mouth to say no. “I’m the sister,” Muriel quickly added. “I’ve taken the train. Five minutes alone with her? Please?”

  He seemed to sense that she wasn’t going to leave. Perhaps he’d seen the cab drive off from one of the upstairs windows? Tugging at the white cuffs peering out from his dark jacket, he said, “Wait here a moment, will you?”

  Muriel waited. She stood in the center of the pretty room and noticed the beautifully camouflaged tissue boxes on every surface. She pictured Will and Emma sitting in the two armchairs, both reaching for a tissue at the exact moment they felt the vast aloneness of life without the woman who made their lives so livable.

  “She happens to be ready,” the funeral director said, returning. “Because you’re family . . .” His voice faded into padded footsteps down a wide hallway. Muriel followed him. The same muted wallpaper lined the hall. Table lamps, instead of overhead lighting, added to the homey feel. More tissue boxes were discreetly placed on half-moon tables. The director stopped at the open door of Pia’s viewing room and said, kindly, “Take all the time you need.”

  With a respectful step back, and a pious head bow, he turned and left Muriel alone in the hallway. She was startled. Shouldn’t he . . . escort her in? Make sure she didn’t scream or faint? What if she took one look at Pia’s dead body and vomited on their pristine carpet? It took a moment for Muriel to realize he’d given her exactly what she’d asked for: a few minutes alone with her sister.

  All of a sudden it became clear that walking required a complex set of coordinated movements. There was leg lifting and balancing on one foot and kicking the knee forward and leaning the torso in just so. All for one step! How did people do it so effortlessly? Muriel wasn’t sure she could manage. Her legs felt like tree trunks, rooted to the carpeting below her feet. Perhaps the cabdriver was nearby reading the Post? Surely he didn’t just drive around wasting gas on the odd chance someone needed a ride? This was Connecticut, after all, the land of the hybrid SUV.

  If she hadn’t worried about annoying the funeral director—almost certainly he’d donned his jacket for the express purpose of dealing with her early arrival—she might have turned her head and called out, “Sir? Excuse me. I seem to have changed my mind.” Instead, Muriel lifted one wooden leg and flung it out in front of her. Then the other.

  The smell of roses struck her first. They strongly perfumed the air in a heavy greenish scent. Gold drapery lined the walls. White chairs were organized in neat rows. A wooden podium held an open guest book. Muriel hung back with her head down. Never before had she seen a dead body, certainly not one so previously full of life. She was scared. Would Pia look skeletal? Would she remember her sister forever as flat and still? Not bounding down the front steps of their house or gliding down the aisle like an angel in her wedding gown. The whole church had gasped at her beauty that day. Would Muriel now gasp again?

  Sucking in a fortifying breath, she forced herself to step closer. Then she looked up and, yes, she gasped. Pia was—as Muriel should have assumed she would be—gorgeous. Surrounded by giant bouquets of bursting yellow roses, Pia was laid out in a gunmetal casket in her gray satin dress. The effect was stunning—a sunburst surrounding a storm cloud. Dramatic and magnificent. So very her. Muriel pressed both hands to her chest. Even in death, her sister took her breath away.

  “My God,” she said, kneeling on the cushioned rail positioned in front of the casket. Pia’s wig was styled perfectly, the tiniest flip at her collarbone. Primrose pink lipstick softly colored her lips. The slightest hint of blush and foundation warmed her pale cheeks. Her face looked relaxed and unlined. Pain free. Somehow, she looked healthier than she had when Muriel had last seen her. As if cancer no longer enslaved her body. She was free. French-manicured nails tipped her fingers, not too long, not too square, exactly as Pia would have wanted. Her hands were folded into a dove on her torso. A pearl rosary was entwined in her slim fingers. The gray satin dress was ironed and smoothed. Muriel had feared she would burst into tears. Instead, she beamed. “Oh, Pia. You would be so happy. You look perfect.”

  For a long time, Muriel knelt in place and silently stared. She marveled at the way Pia’s eyebrows arched into a sharp inverted V. The bridge of her nose was narrow and smooth, its tip a martini olive. Both cheekbones surfaced just under her eyes, as high as they could go, really, and her lips were fuller on the bottom than the top, ever so slightly tipped up at the corners. In close-up, the face she’d seen a thousand times looked entirely different. More human, somehow. Oddly, more alive.

  Muriel reached her hand out to touch Pia’s face, but she stopped in midair, afraid that her sister’s skin might feel hard or cold. Would it be a mannequin’s cheek? That, she didn’t want to know. Forever she would rather remember Pia’s touch on the sunporch, her urgent grasp when she described having a child as seeing God on earth. Pulling her hand back, Muriel rested it on the soft railing of the kneeling pew. Then she continued to stare, struck by the privilege of time to memorize her sister’s face. No one was there to say, “God, Muriel. Take a picture, why don’t you?” No one could break the spell by pulling her away. For once, for the first time, Pia was all hers.

  “It’s me,” she whispered, finally. “Muriel.”

  Quickly, Muriel glanced behind her to make sure they were alone.

  “I wanted to talk to you for a minute, Pia. Just us. One last time.”

  Muriel tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as tears threatened. Her voice wobbly, she said, “We never got a chance to talk at the very end. I know things went south fast, but I was hoping to say one more thing. It’s been on my mind for a while. There never seemed to be the right moment. But now, it’s just you and me. So here goes.”

  Again, Muriel looked over her shoulder to make sure no one else had come into the room. “You asked me to forgive you, Pia, and I did years ago. But I’ve always been too afraid to ask you for the same thing. From the moment I was born, I knew I never was the sister you wanted me to be. Somebody you could be proud of. I tried. Truly, I did.”

  Unable to hold them back, tears wet Muriel’s face. “You must have been shocked to see me grow up. So unlike you and Mama. Such a foreign being. Who is this round thing? I felt your disapproval always. Your disdain.” Muriel looked down. “Still—”

  She closed her eyes and sniffed. The thickly scented air entered and exited her lungs. Saliva pooled behind her lips. She swallowed hard. Opening her eyes, she folded her hands in prayer.

  “Can you manage this one last thing—wherever you are—wherever your soul is? Release me. Please, Pia. Forgive me for not being somebody you could love. Forgive me my trespasses so I can forgive myself. Set me free. Don’t make me live in your shadow anymore. Help me find my own light.”

  As she took a breath to confess how many times she’d rerun the past weeks and months, recasting the sister role, rehearsing her part until she got it exactly right—doing instead of wondering what to do, knowing how to comfort, how to be there naturally because that’s what real sisters just knew—the funeral director appeared in the door frame with his solemn expression and dark suit and softly said, “Miss Winston?”

  Muriel turned her head. “I’m a Sullivant,” she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks with both hands.

  “Excuse me for interrupting you, Miss Sullivant. Other family members are here. May I send them in?”

  “Of course.” Muriel’s lips bent in a closed-mouth smile. She made the sign of the cross, not sure if it was proper protocol or not, then stood and quietly left the funeral home out a side door. Let Lidia have time alone with her favorite child, Muriel thought. It’s only fair.

  INSIDE THE SMALL church, jewel-colored stained-glass windows lined both upper walls. Celestial rays of blue and o
range filtered down onto the white pews. Pia’s closed casket—covered in the yellow roses from the mortuary—sat at the front, below the linen-covered altar. A large stunning photograph of her reminded everyone of what they had lost.

  Before the funeral mass began, the family solemnly walked to the front pew and seated themselves. Owen’s parents were there, too. Lidia arranged her veil in precise folds across her face. Will and Emma stared straight ahead. Muriel sat upright and willed herself not to cry. Above the altar, a giant Jesus gazed mournfully down from his crucifix. Muriel stared at the black-red teardrop of blood that was painted next to the open wound in his crossed veined feet.

  “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some shall live forever . . .” Beside her, in a whisper, Owen practiced his reading from the prophet Daniel.

  From somewhere above, a harpist filled the air with trills of angelic notes. The musky scent of incense clouded the air. Not too much. Just enough. En masse, the congregation turned to watch pairs of scrubbed altar boys, dressed in their red cassocks, carrying gold-filigreed processional candles soberly up the center aisle. They circled around Pia’s silver casket and settled themselves to the right and left of the altar. As if on cue, the crowd leaned back in the pews and waited. With kids fidgeting in their stiff Sunday shoes and relatives coughing and Connecticut women slyly reapplying lipstick while their husbands glanced at their Rolex watches, the side door to the sacristy opened with an eerie creak. Muriel tilted her head to face the noise and gasped audibly. There, Father Camilo emerged—palms pressed together and head bowed piously—to say her sister’s funeral mass.

  Part III

  Gone Today, Here Tomorrow

  Chapter 30

  AMERICA, AS FAR as Muriel could tell, was a monotonous repetition of Targets, Walmarts, Home Depots, Costcos, and mall after mall after mall. There were also Burger Kings and Cinnabons and Starbucks and Pizza Huts and rest stops that usually had an assortment of all four. Joanie Frankel, seated next to Muriel in the rental car, was a camel. Each time she snuffled awake, Muriel asked, “Need a potty break?”

  “Not yet.” She’d then nuzzle back up to the headrest and fall soundly asleep again. Muriel had never seen anyone sleep so much. Or use the restroom so little. Was there a colostomy bag beneath those folds of fabric? Had she developed narcolepsy on the George Washington Bridge?

  It was a sixty-hour road trip. Which they planned to do in a week, sharing the driving load. Three days out, one day there, three days back. Of course, flying would have been much faster, but Joanie Frankel didn’t fly, and Muriel didn’t want to admit it, but she couldn’t go alone. Not with her grief so prickling. So she endured the road. The gray blur of asphalt reminded her of Pia’s final satin dress; the rhythmic rocking of the car brought her back to that magical afternoon on the sunporch when she’d been so lovingly embraced by the sister who had once been so cruel to her.

  Months had passed since the Connecticut funeral. Pia’s absence left more of a hole in Muriel’s heart than her nonpresence in Muriel’s life ever had. She felt cheated. She wanted answers. Her confusion and sorrow had become a fermented burbling brew, brown edged and smelling of rot.

  Snorting, Joanie jolted awake.

  “Rest stop?” Muriel asked.

  “No need.” Yawning dramatically, she added, “You may have noticed I have a bladder the size of a Prada bag.”

  AFTER ELEVEN HOURS on the road, the two women dragged their rolling suitcases into a Holiday Inn Express near the interstate on the outskirts of Cincinnati. Both devoured messy barbecued pork ribs out of Styrofoam containers and fell into a comatose sleep. In the morning, after American cheese omelets that looked like neatly folded napkins, they showered and dressed and were ready to continue their journey.

  “Wanna drive?” Muriel asked her best friend.

  “Not just yet, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind, if you’re up for a small detour.”

  “Canada?”

  Muriel laughed. “A bit less out of our way. All you need to do is relax and open your mind.”

  Brandishing a thumbs-up, Joanie landed on the passenger seat in a fabricky puff and opened the window, breaking every rental rule by lighting a cigarette. “I blow it out the side!” she said, indignant, when Muriel shot her a reprimanding look.

  “And it blows right back in.”

  “That’s my fault?”

  They drove about half an hour or so. At exit 11, the asphalt mellowed into Kentucky farmland. It was gorgeous countryside. Fields of prairie bluegrass were, indeed, blue. And the cloudless sky was the color of corydalis flowers. Heaven and earth blended into one stunning azure horizon. Even Joanie managed to stay awake. The swaying fields seemed to calm her. Aside from an espresso brown horse here and there, lazily flicking its tail, it felt as if the two women were the last humans left on the planet. Not another soul was to be seen for miles. It was startling, therefore, to veer around a bend and spot a modern glass-and-brick building rising out of the flat earth. Yet there it was, low and wide, suddenly crowded with families in gigantic square shorts, clunky white sneakers, and thick sweatshirts with loud logos.

  “Walmart rehab?” Joanie asked. Muriel laughed and parked in the large lot beneath a poplar tree. Cutting the engine, she stepped out of the car and stretched her arms overhead. The air smelled faintly of fertilizer. Muriel wore black sunglasses, black jeans, black loafers, a black T-shirt, and a black pullover sweater. “Wiccan chic,” Joanie had chided her that morning. As usual, her own outfit was a layered amorphous gauzy print. When Joanie moved, her clothes sashayed all around her.

  Together the two women walked up a landscaped path to the entrance where a sign read PREPARE TO BELIEVE.

  Joanie stopped dead. “Dear God.”

  “We were so close to it. How could we not check it out? Especially since Pia was so into it. I need to understand what she was thinking.”

  Joanie thought for a moment, then she nodded. Lifting her head, she set her jaw and cocked one eyebrow. “I’m prepared. Bring it on.”

  In they walked into another world. The world according to God: the Creation Museum. Prepare to believe. Instantly, Joanie draped her arm around Muriel’s shoulder.

  “Let’s see if they are prepared to believe what their own Bible says: love thy neighbor.”

  “Please don’t make a scene,” Muriel whispered through smiling teeth.

  There was a line to buy tickets. Joanie pasted an angelic expression on her face and took Muriel’s hand in hers as they inched forward. Muriel attempted to pull her palm free, but Joanie held fast. At the cashier’s, Joanie asked, “Do you have a married couple’s discount?”

  The befuddled older woman behind the counter said, “Um, no.” In her gentle Kentucky drawl, she added, “But if you purchase museum and planetarium tickets together it’s the best deal.”

  “Just the museum, please,” Muriel said, overgrinning. “We only have half an hour.”

  Turning to Muriel, Joanie said, “Can you pay, sweetheart? I’ve left my chain wallet in the pocket of my flannel shirt.”

  Quickly, Muriel jerked her hand free from Joanie’s grip and gave the cashier her credit card. Beside her, Joanie lovingly stroked her hair.

  “You really are a pain,” Muriel said as they left the counter with their tickets in hand.

  “Did you see those ticket prices? It’s less to enter the Met! What about their commandment not to steal? Aren’t the poor blessed in their book? Don’t they get into heaven first? Apparently, they can’t get into this museum at all. Not to mention the planetarium. Their ‘deal’ is a family’s food budget! And did you notice that they’re open on Sunday? God’s day. I seem to remember a commandment in the original ten that forbids working on the Sabbath.”

  “Are you done?”

  Joanie fluffed up her curly hair. “For now,” she said haughtily.

  “Good. Put your New York away and open your mind.”

  Raising both hands
in surrender, Joanie pressed her lips together and made a zipping motion with two fingers. Silently, she followed Muriel to the opening exhibit: Genesis. Of course.

  Laid out like a biblical Ikea, the Creation Museum is a walking tour through the Bible, billed as a place where the true origins of the earth can finally be told. Complete with animatronic dinosaurs and an actual ark, it winds a path through the seven Cs of the fundamental Christian take on history: creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion, Christ, cross, and consummation. First stop: the cavelike opening to the beginning of life on our planet. Over the loudspeaker, a godly voice asks, “Ever wonder how the Grand Canyon was really created?”

  “No,” said Joanie out loud. Muriel shot her another look. In they went. Prepare to believe.

  Instantly and proudly, science was slammed. Since the Bible states that God made the earth and the universe in six days—and both, according to the holy book, are only about six thousand years old—the Grand Canyon couldn’t possibly have been formed by millions of years of erosion the way secular science would have you believe. The truth, they said in the first stop on the creation tour, was that the Grand Canyon was made by a massive worldwide flood. And it was fast. God’s deluge gushed forth, scrubbing the earth clean of everything sinful and dirty. When the water receded, poof! There was a huge crack in Arizona that would come to be known as the Grand Canyon. Thankfully, several fortunate creatures were able to ride out the storm by cramming themselves onto Noah’s ark, two by two. Dinosaurs among them.

  “Are you kidding me?” Joanie said, agog.

  Admittedly, it was a lot to swallow. Pia believed this? Muriel thought. Behind them a father with a low side part in his hair and ironed slacks said to his young son, “Makes sense to me. If it was erosion, where did all that dirt go?”

  Joanie dug her fingernails into Muriel’s sweatered forearm. As they walked deeper into the Bible, she periodically stopped and blinked, silenced for perhaps the first time in her life. God’s master plan emerged before their eyes and ears. Seems He created dinosaurs on day six, the same day Adam and Eve came into being. Clearly a full day on God’s calendar. Scientists who used carbon dating to determine the age of a fossil were only wasting their time, a voice-over said. Why bother? If a dinosaur wasn’t small enough to wedge itself onto Noah’s ark, it was killed in the massive flood about four thousand years ago. Therefore even the very oldest dinosaurs were the same age as the oldest humans. They romped through the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve—their big slobbery pets. Should you wonder why human bones were never found with dinosaur fossils, the voice-over loop had an explanation: “It simply means they weren’t buried together. In the same way humans aren’t now buried with crocodiles.”