The Story Sisters

by Alice Hoffman

  “Okay,” Claire agreed. She took her sister’s hand. “I shouldn’t have let them do it,” she said. She’d been wanting to say this ever since that day when they went to New Hampshire. “We thought they would find a place that would help you.”

  Elv withdrew her hand and looked away. “I can help myself.”

  “I was afraid you would die from using drugs.” Claire blinked back tears.

  Elv handed her a Kleenex from a box in the back of the car. “I don’t blame you. I know it wasn’t your idea.”

  Claire began to cry in earnest.

  “It’s okay.” Elv wrapped her arms around her little sister. “I know you’d never do anything to hurt me.” That’s when Claire knew they didn’t have to talk about it anymore. She felt lucky and free and utterly grateful to be with her sister, who was more beautiful than anyone else in the entire stupid town.

  It took a while to get the car going. The car made a wrenching noise when Claire pulled the shift into first gear, which made them laugh all over again. Finally they figured out a system in which Claire shifted and Elv steered as she worked the gas and the clutch. They stalled out at the stop sign on Spring Street, got the giggles, then managed to get going again. They drove to the house where their father and Cheryl lived. They had both transferred to another school, out in the Hamptons. There was a For Sale sign out in front. Claire and Meg had never even been invited over for dinner. Not even while Elv had been gone. Thankfully, no one was home when they pulled the Miata into the garage.

  “Good work, kiddo,” Elv said appreciatively.

  “Leave the windows open.” Claire couldn’t help being practical. It was in her nature. “That will air out the smoke.”

  “Very smart.” Elv rolled down the windows of the Miata. “But of course you would be. You’re my sister.”

  Claire felt a flush of pride. She wondered what it was like to be so fearless.

  Elv returned the car keys to a peg on the garage wall. “He’ll never know. Self-involved people never look any farther than their own asses. And he definitely is an ass.”

  “Maybe he’ll think Cheryl took it for a spin,” Claire said. “Maybe they’ll fight and break up and he’ll come back to Mom.”

  “I don’t think so,” Elv replied. “I wouldn’t wait around hoping for that.”

  They snuck out of the garage and walked through town.

  “You’re a pretty great accomplice,” Elv said. “A plus.”

  Claire felt a shiver of pleasure. They shouldn’t have taken their father’s car. Still, it was a compliment.

  Elv was a fast walker, and Claire had to hurry to keep up with her. She found her sister fascinating. When they got to their block, she thought she saw Mrs. Weinstein looking out of the bay window of her living room. Maybe she was thinking of that time Elv had torn up the roses from her yard for a protection charm to hang above her bed or the time Elv yelled at her for mistreating Pretzel, keeping him tied up on the lawn.

  “You’re a pretty good driver,” Elv told Claire. She missed having Claire as her ally. Meg had done her best to steal her away, but that was over with now. “Let’s celebrate by eating.” They used to do that all the time. Sneak food up to their room and snack all night.

  When they arrived home, Claire and Elv went to the fridge and took out everything chocolate: ice cream, fudge sauce, brownies. They were laughing about how many calories they could fit into one bowl when Meg came downstairs. She stood in the doorway, watching.

  “Hey,” Claire said when she noticed Meg. “You’ll never believe what we did.” Claire had poured a ton of chocolate sauce into her bowl. Now she was adding chocolate chips. “Oh my God,” she said to Elv. “This is probably a million calories.”

  “More like a zillion.” Elv grinned. “Add more chips. Oh, and candy bars!”

  “Don’t you have homework to do?” Meg reminded Claire.

  “What are you? Her mother?” Elv was at the snack drawer getting out a Kit Kat bar, which she broke into pieces to add to the sundaes. “Let’s utterly pig out,” she said to Claire.

  “Yum,” Claire said. “These look amazing.”

  “You have a paper for American lit,” Meg said to her. “You told me you did. I said I would help you.”

  “You’re such a baby,” Elv told Meg. “Miss Goody Two-shoes. Why don’t I just hand you a knife and you can stab me in the back?”

  “Come on,” Meg said to Claire.

  Claire left her sundae on the counter. She put her spoon in the sink. She could smell the smoke in her own hair. “I guess I’m not that hungry,” she said.

  She grabbed her book bag and followed Meg upstairs.

  “Go ahead,” Elv called after them. “You’re both babies!”

  The girls went to their room. They set to work on the term paper in bed. The lock on the door was clicked shut. Claire glanced at the space where Elv’s bed used to be. She missed there being three of them. She missed the way things used to be.

  “She’s really okay,” Claire told Meg. “She’s not exactly the same, but she’s Elvish.”

  “If you say so.”

  Meg had begun to see the school counselor. She hadn’t told anyone, not even Claire. She stopped by Mrs. Morrison’s office every Tuesday and Thursday at ten o’clock. Sometimes she talked and sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she sat there and cried. She didn’t exactly know why she wanted to see Mrs. Morrison. Maybe it was because she felt alone even when she was in a room full of people, even when she was in her very own bed talking to Claire. The one thing she knew for certain was that it would never be the three of them again.

  “She’s still Elv,” Claire ventured.

  “Take my advice,” Meg said. “Don’t trust her.”

  IT WAS THE middle of the night when it happened, a blue-black rainy night. The rain began at midnight, tapping on the windows before coming down in sheets. Claire suddenly woke with a fever. There had been midterms at school, and she’d been coughing and had a painful sore throat; now her illness suddenly took a turn, her fever spiking to 103. She got out of bed in her nightgown, drenched. Everything looked funny: her room, the light through the window. Meg was sound asleep. Claire wished Elv was in the next bed and she could get under the blanket with her and Elv could tell her she would feel better soon the way she did when Claire was little.

  Claire went downstairs for a glass of water. Her head was throbbing. She should have gone to her mother, but it was Elv she wanted. As she went down the hall she heard people talking, a murmur, as if a radio had been left on. A muffled laugh pealed, then dissolved. Things looked different in the dark. The hallway seemed longer. A pale glow was cast by the moonlight coming in through the windows in the living room. It pooled on the hallway carpet like puddles of milk. Elv always locked her door, but she’d shown Claire how to get in. Only for emergencies, Elv had said. Reuna malin, she whispered. Reuna malin, Claire echoed.

  She should have rescued Elv from Westfield. Elv had officially forgiven her, but Claire often couldn’t sleep, kept awake by her shame. She rewound that day in New Hampshire inside her head. The way those men had grabbed Elv, the red leaves fluttering down like birds. She kept thinking about how Elv had opened the car door and run and kept running without looking back. Claire would never get back to sleep tonight. She was burning up, the way she had been when there’d been the heat wave and her arms were in casts and she had to sleep all alone in the attic while her sisters went to France. She still wanted that black painting of the river. She wondered if Elv had it, or if she’d thrown it away.

  Elv kept a key under the hallway carpet. Claire bent to retrieve it. She thought she might faint. It was definitely an emergency.

  Long before the rain began, Lorry had climbed through the window. He’d been to their house a dozen times or more with no one the wiser. That’s what he did, after all. He was a thief, and he was good at it. All fall, Elv had been going to meet him in Astoria, at a basement apartment Michael had rented before he’d been pick
ed up again for auto theft. He’d been sent to Rikers this time. Now that he was eighteen he had been tried as an adult. The apartment had been empty for several months, but now Lorry had to relocate. In the meantime, North Point Harbor would have to do. He’d gotten to know the town. It was easy to pull off a robbery. People rarely locked their doors; they left cash and jewelry scattered around. Even the dogs, mostly cheerful golden retrievers and Labradors, seemed happy to greet him.

  On this evening he’d arrived at dusk, hastening through the garden, where Elv’s mother used to tell her stories, hands in his pockets. It was drizzling and the green trees loomed. He always wore the same black boots, though they now had holes in the soles, and his black coat. Her family had no idea what went on. Sometimes he was there waiting in her room all through their dinner, his car parked around the curve, past the Weinsteins’ house. It felt illicit and crazy when they had sex in her bed. They wanted to laugh, but were afraid to make noise. He covered her mouth with his when she did laugh. Shh, he told her. Don’t say a word, and she didn’t. Only a few more months, and she’d be his. Then she could shout out loud. They wouldn’t have to slink around or play by anyone else’s rules. He knew he hadn’t lived a perfect, blameless life, but this was different. He was careful not to let her get high too often. There were limits, and he’d been around long enough to know what they were. One of them with a fatal flaw was enough. Not that he didn’t have other flaws as well. Elv being one of them. He couldn’t stay away even though he knew he was risking too much, being with her in her mother’s house when she was underage. He was in love, and people in that condition did stupid, unfathomable things. They were all flawed, every single one.

  “Tell me a story,” she whispered in bed. “Tell me about the dog.”

  He spoke softly, arms around her. A posse had been formed. They had lanterns, torches, and knives. It didn’t take long for them to find the gang who had killed Mother, his grand watchdog, the mother of all vicious, loyal beasts. The gang responsible was made up of a hodgepodge of thugs who terrorized women and children living underground, demanding protection money from the sick and the weak.

  They went after a little girl named Emma, having been contacted by a couple aboveground who would pay two thousand dollars in exchange for a child. Emma was perfect. Her mother brought her to a public school kindergarten every day, waiting on a bench outside until the school day was done. That’s where the unscrupulous couple had first spied her, deciding they wanted her for their own.

  On the day of the planned abduction, Lorry and Mother had been passing by the tent where the child and her mother lived. Mother knew evil so well he could smell it. He stopped and bared his teeth. The fur along his back rose up in a ridge. The gang scattered now that Lorry and his dog were on the scene. Still, their intentions were clear; someone had cut through the tent where Emma and her mother lived. Someone was just about to grab her.

  As a reward, Lorry and his dog were offered bowls of stew. It was all the woman had to show her gratitude, and on that night it seemed a great gift. Lorry and Mother were both starving.

  The death of his dog was payback for thwarting the plan to take the little girl. Well, payback it would be. There were pools of blood when Lorry and his friends were done with the gang, and then a scattering. Two bodies on the track, the worst of the worst. Some things were meant to never be mentioned again, not then and not ever. When those who’d been there on that evening passed each other in the future, they nodded and rarely said more than a few words in greeting, yet they were brothers in some unspoken way. Lorry wrapped up the dog’s body in the only blanket he owned, then carried him outside. He buried the dog in Central Park, not far from the zoo. He wanted his dog to be where snow would rim the ground, where the grass grew. There was a freedom in that, even for the fallen.

  Elv was naked, she seemed like snow herself, her skin was so pale. She was crying over Mother as Lorry kissed her. She felt unwound in his arms. They were completely entwined when they heard the door open. Claire was there, whimpering, apologizing. Elv leaped out of bed and went to the door.

  “God, Claire! What the hell are you doing?” She touched her sister’s forehead. “You’re burning up.”

  Claire peered around her sister. “Was that Justin Levy’s ghost?”

  Elv turned to look. Lorry had gone through the window, into the rain.

  “Justin doesn’t have a ghost,” she assured Claire.

  She brought Claire into her room, closed the door, then took her sister into bed.

  “You don’t know that,” Claire insisted. She felt panic-stricken and faint. “He used to come into our room. I think he’s still doing that.”

  “It was Lorry, silly. I told you about him.”

  “The one you’re in love with.”

  “The one who turns me inside out.”

  “Doesn’t it hurt?” Claire said in a hushed voice.

  “Yes.” Elv looked out at the rain. “It does.”

  She shoved the drug paraphernalia he’d left behind into the night table drawer. Lorry hadn’t had time to collect it all. She could still feel him all over her. She pulled on a nightgown and got into bed with Claire. She had Lorry’s works and enough for her to get high later by herself. She loved the dreamy way she felt. There was the sound of the rain, comforting against the window-pane. He’d be drenched as he ran to his car. He’d be thinking of her all night long.

  “He comes from the world underground.” Elv gave her sister a sip of water from the tumbler on her night table, along with two aspirin.

  “No, he doesn’t.” Claire almost laughed, but she felt too weak.

  “You can find the gate if you walk along Thirty-third Street right behind Penn Station. You have to go down eight stories, under the trains, under the subway. There are ten thousand steps with wild creatures all around. There are black roses growing beside the tracks.”

  “He comes from Arnelle?” Claire was confused.

  “Go to sleep,” Elv told her. “You’ll be better in the morning. You won’t even remember this.”

  “Yes, I will.” Claire was so glad that her sister was back. “I always will.”

  MRS. WEINSTEIN WAS the one who phoned to report seeing a man slinking through their window. She had nothing to do but gossip and butt her nose in where it wasn’t wanted. Elv came out of her room to find her mother calling the police. She grabbed the receiver away.

  “It wasn’t a criminal. Don’t report him,” she pleaded.

  “Elv,” Annie said. “How could you?”

  “How could I what? Find true love? Get what you never had?”

  Claire was still in bed; she stayed under the covers, listening to them fight. She’d found a photograph of Lorry under the pillow. She gazed at him, then hurriedly returned the picture when Elv slammed back into the room. She was being sent away to their grandmother’s, and that suited her perfectly.

  “Help me pack, Gigi,” she said to Claire.

  Claire got out of bed and went to the bureau. Elv had burned most of her clothes. They tossed everything she had into a single suitcase. Right before she left she retrieved the photo from under her pillow. She kissed Claire on either check and told her not to forget her, as if that would ever happen.

  AFTER HER GRANDDAUGHTER moved into her New York apartment, Natalia had the same feeling of dread she’d had in Paris when Madame Cohen warned her to keep an eye on Elv. Some girls were in danger of vanishing just as children in fairy tales disappeared, out the door, under the hedge, never to be found again. But in fact, Elv was well behaved. She helped with the dishes. She played cards with her ama. She slept on the clean, white sheets and took baths in verbena bath oil in the big marble tub in her grandmother’s bathroom. She tried on all of her ama’s old clothes—black satin suits, white lace blouses, high heels, blue cashmere sweaters with crystal buttons, Chanel jackets that fitted her perfectly—then paraded around for her grandmother’s approval.

  But she often disappeared for hours, even
days, and when she returned she was too exhausted to talk; she simply crawled between the white sheets and fell so deeply asleep that Natalia couldn’t wake her for dinner. It snowed nearly every day, and Elv usually woke in the late afternoon to go meet Lorry. They had their rendezvous spot in Manhattan, as they’d had their meeting place in New Hampshire. It was just beyond the meadow where the dog, Mother, had been buried. Lorry had taken Elv there, and they’d left a handful of roses stolen from the market on the corner. The weather had turned and Lorry was still looking for an apartment, so they met in an underpass near the zoo. It was easy to forget you were in Manhattan in their corner of the park. Everything was muffled and quiet. It made Elv think of New Hampshire. She still missed the horses. She wondered who was taking care of them and if they would remember her if she ever went back.

  Elv hadn’t thought she needed to get high, but sometimes there was something needy snaking through her, rising to the surface. It was hot, dangerous. It felt like the way she needed him. At last she heard footsteps on the path. Lorry appeared, wearing his black coat and a black woolen hat. He looked beautiful in the snow. Snow didn’t bother him. Nothing did. He reminded her of a man in a fairy tale who could always find his way, even without a map.

  Everything was white. There were snowflakes on Elv’s eyelashes. Inside the tunnel there was the smell of piss and hay, not that it mattered. Elv heard a wolf in the zoo. She thought of all the animals out in the snow in New York City; she thought of the time Claire stole a horse just to please her. She loved her sister and Claire loved her back and they didn’t even have to speak to understand each other. She wondered if the carousel horses were still in the park or if they’d run away too. Elv shrugged off the cashmere coat she’d borrowed from her grandmother’s closet. She told Lorry she couldn’t sneak him into her grandmother’s apartment the way he’d come to the house in North Point Harbor. Her grandmother would have a heart attack or something, and the apartment wasn’t that big. For the past few days, Lorry had been living hand to mouth, staying with friends, waiting for a big break-in to go down someplace in Great Neck. Elv hated lying to him, but she claimed the apartment was haunted by her grandfather’s ghost. Lorry had a fear of ghosts. He said that was the only thing he’d worried about when he’d lived underground. There were so many ghosts down below you could hear them moaning in the night.