Only sisters, p.21
Only Sisters, page 21
In early August, I moved into the apartment that overlooked the ravine but was nervous about furnishing it in case everything had to be removed for reasons unforeseen though inevitable. That’s how the mind works: you think the old familiar crisis is sure to come again. Not the one that’s looming.
I brought things out of my storage locker one at a time: the photograph of me and my sister playing Candy Land; a larger painting of the ravine where we used to run around; the armchair rocker. I remembered sitting in it with Zoe on my lap when she was five and had bad dreams, soothing her with the motion. I wondered what my sister had done when she woke up from a nightmare all those years away from me.
At first, I slept on the air mattress, but it was uncomfortable in the long term, so I gave in and bought a bed. Snowball grew bigger until he was too heavy to sleep on my neck. When I uploaded patient notes, he curled up in my lap, kneading my thighs with his claws. I trimmed them. I ordered a rug and a coffee table. Sarah and Noah visited and discovered that they could play games they couldn’t play at home because my internet speed was so much faster. (Ruth and Bruno had kept their home connection slow, hoping it would discourage their kids from life in front of a screen.) They became regular visitors, Sarah bringing her own laptop, and Noah using an old one of mine. I bought a large pot and made popcorn for them in it. Then I got a kitchen table and chairs for them to sit on. An Xbox and a TV. An L-shaped couch. In mid-August, Sarah had her fifteenth birthday and Noah his sixth. I got them both video games.
I was expected at Bruno’s for Friday dinners and I went, bringing my chocolate cake, the recipe modified with loads of chocolate chips, icing and sprinkles. When I arrived, Noah—who’d decided Spider-Man was for little kids and his favourite colour was now blue—always hugged me. His sister had started going out with a boy nearly as tall as her father, and they were usually in her room, the door partially open as required by Ruth, who periodically checked to ensure it was. After dinner, I helped clean up. While the other adults bustled around, George sat like a king, and I teased him about it. He got me right back: “Joan runs to the kitchen like I’m going to bite, but I am a good doggie, I stay in the dining room.” It was as if I was part of the family. I felt like part of the family. Also not. Since it was all based on a lie.
The poignancy of George’s affection, of all their affection, made me cry when I was at home. I’d stand on the balcony of my new apartment with tears rolling off my chin, falling on the ravine below. Some evenings, I was surprised to look from the darkening sky to the clock and notice the days getting shorter.
Patients died; I took care of others. A new patient assigned to me had no jaw, and I steeled myself for meeting him by watching an interview with Roger Ebert, the movie critic who’d had the same surgery and ended up looking like a ventriloquist’s dummy. It wasn’t as shocking as I’d feared. My patient was still himself. He couldn’t preach sermons anymore or fly-fish, but when I arrived, he was engrossed in a mystery featuring a fly-fisherman-ex-priest.
Toward the end of August, my lawyer returned from his Newfoundland cabin. When I was walking through the ravine at dusk, he called to tell me that probate had been granted, so I could now execute the will’s provisions. I looked up at the purple sky, at the wisps of green at the edge of the rising moon.
Augie and I met at Mom’s house. It was awkward, but we were both polite, keeping the conversation focused on business. I wanted to sell the house with all its contents rather than deal with storing things that meant nothing to me. He listed it for what I thought was an outrageous amount, and I was relieved, believing the sale would take ages. So, there was no rush to talk to Bruno about his inheritance, and I still had some time to figure out how to deal with Raoul. Augie left in his car; I left in mine.
The first weekend in September, there was a bidding war on Mom’s house. Apparently, the price wasn’t outrageous enough, since it sold by Monday. The buyers were eager to move in right away. The funds landed in my bank account and I wrote out a cheque for Bruno, which I put in my wallet, the edge poking above the bill pocket. Whenever I opened my wallet, it reminded me that I had to deal with this soon.
I planned where and how I’d tell him—in a coffee shop, at the library, on his porch, on the moon, at my lawyer’s. I’d tell Gary about Vivien then too and kill one bird with two stones. Or was it the other way around? Dead birds were involved anyway. I thought having someone there to mediate would make it more civilized.
The next Friday—it was the thirteenth, but Ruth said Jews didn’t consider the date bad luck—I noticed she didn’t eat dessert. Ruth loved sweets. I’d baked a lemon cake and it had turned out all right. Everyone else liked it, but Ruth said she wasn’t hungry. She hadn’t eaten much dinner, either, and her colour was off, unnaturally greyish like smoked oak. I knew she’d had a bit of blood in her urine from a bladder infection, for which she’d had a course of antibiotics, and was still experiencing pain in her abdomen. She told me that she was taking probiotics and would be fine in a few days. While the rest of us ate dessert, she excused herself and went to bed.
After the dishes were dried and everything put away, I asked Bruno, “Okay if I just go upstairs to say goodbye to Ruth?”
He said, “Of course. She’d like that.”
She was still awake, and I sat on her bed. Had the clinic taken a urine sample to culture? She thought so. Had they called with the results? No. I asked her to call them and inquire. Could I examine her? She nodded. I remember the feeling of her thin wrist under my fingers. The bedroom was at the front of the house; waves of sound and odour rolled off the street and floated through the open window: wood burning in someone’s fireplace, a bundle buggy or stroller rattling by, someone crying, someone calling, cigarettes—tobacco first and a few minutes later weed. Where I grew up in the suburbs, you didn’t hear or smell your neighbours; that was the point of it.
Ruth’s pulse was a bit fast but not worrisome. Then I laid my hands on Ruth’s abdomen and quickly removed them. She asked me why, and I mumbled something about cold hands because the truth was ridiculous: for a moment, I’d felt what I can only describe as worms wriggling under my palms. I rubbed my hands together and then placed them again on Ruth’s belly, keeping them there by force of will as I palpated. I felt nothing hard and her organs were where they should be. I asked her to let me know what she found out when she called the clinic.
That night, I wrote in my journal, I need to get more sleep.
* * *
The next morning, I took my car in for an oil change. I was sitting in the waiting room of the garage when Raoul messaged Vivien: I’m here!
For an instant, I thought he’d gone back to the DRC. Then I remembered. He was here, in Toronto, for the supposed memorial for Mom. Mid-September had seemed so far in the future when we’d talked, I’d put it out of my mind. My heart didn’t race—there was no excitement in fooling anyone now. It just had to be done.
SAT, SEP 14, 09:32 AM
Vivien: Where are you now?
Raoul: The airport. Terminal 1
Vivien: Why didn’t you send me your flight info?
Raoul: I told you I’d stop over on the way to Chicago
Vivien: But I didn’t go home. We decided not to have a memorial service
Raoul: Oh no! And I booked such a nice hotel. What do I do now?
Vivien: Change your flight
About half an hour later, my car was ready, and just as I was getting into the driver’s seat, Raoul messaged that the earliest flight he could get to Chicago was at five thirty. He had nothing to do (sad face, sad face).
I sat for a moment, thinking, then replied, Joan can pick you up. Wait at the taxi drop-off.
I needed to meet someone who’d known my sister better than I had in these last years—to see his face, hear his voice, with no screen between us. When I got to Arrivals, I saw him standing near the curb, recognizable from the photos I’d studied: brushed-back hair, impish smile, button eyes.
Behind me a taxi was honking. I unlocked the car door and leaned over to open it. “Raoul! Get in.”
He slid into the front seat, threw a bag into the back and quickly closed the door. “Thank you, Joan. You still look the same.”
“As what?” I pulled away from the curb.
“The picture pinned up in Vivien’s office. You were watching a video with your stepdaughter.”
“That’s an old one.”
“She said that was the only one she had that showed how beautiful you are.”
We were at a stoplight. I turned to look at him. “Vivien didn’t say that.”
“No, she did. First, she said that for once in a photo you didn’t look like you smelled something bad. Then she said you are beautiful.”
I was astounded: that she’d kept the picture, that she thought of me as beautiful. For a few minutes, I couldn’t speak. Then I got myself together and offered to show Raoul around Toronto, but he wasn’t interested. He only had a couple of hours before he had to be back at the airport, so we settled on lunch in Kensington Market. All the way there, Raoul talked about setting up a gym in his Madrid apartment, and I didn’t interrupt. When we got to College Street, I parked. It was a short walk to Wanda’s Pie in the Sky. At the counter, we ordered salad and dessert, then took our seats at a table.
“It’s good to see someone who knows Vivien,” Raoul said at last.
“For me too. You must have cared for her a lot.”
He toyed with his fork. “I wanted her to come live with me in Spain.”
“She stayed with you longer than anyone else.”
His face brightened, then fell. “She broke up with me when her nightmares started. She just said she needed a change. Maybe if I understood, I could—I don’t know—persuade her.”
“I’ve always thought the same thing. I could make her come back. Did she ever tell you about her baby?”
He nodded. “When I told her I didn’t want kids because it doesn’t go with my work, too much travel, too much risk. She didn’t say very much, only that she’d had a baby she gave up for adoption. Does that have something to do with the nightmares?” He was leaning forward eagerly, as if I was the one who could relieve him of his confusion, his pain, and not the other way around.
I said, “She never told me, but I can guess.”
“Do you think she was assaulted? If I came up behind her, she went crazy on me.”
I nodded. “That’s part of it. The summer she got pregnant, her boyfriend cheated on her, and she cheated on him. They also went to a lot of parties. Got high. Sometimes, she was out of control. That didn’t give anyone the right.”
He murmured his agreement.
“It was all good until it wasn’t. I don’t know if she was too high to say no, or if she thought she was getting into one thing and it turned into something else, or if she was physically restrained. It could have been all of the above, and on multiple occasions. Whatever happened, it was frightening, and she didn’t feel like she could get away.”
“I can’t leave the party. She said that when she woke up from the nightmares.”
“I remember.”
“She is a puzzle, your sister. Do you think that’s why we love her?”
“Maybe everyone’s a puzzle,” I said. “She just didn’t pretend otherwise.”
At the airport, we parted as friends. He kissed me on the cheek before he got out of the car. As he retrieved his bag from the back seat, he said, “She’s not coming back, is she?”
I didn’t hide my tears from him. “No. Never.”
CHAPTER 19
For a couple of days, I was on autopilot. Sunday was laundry day. On Monday, I rode my bike to see patients. The next day, after school, Sarah showed up at my place to work on a media project that she couldn’t do at home because of their slow internet. I ordered pizza for her. While she ate, I settled on the other side of the dining table with my laptop. She asked if I was working, and I told her no, I was writing about the day, as I always did, which led to me telling her about the journals I’d kept since I wasn’t much older than her brother.
“What have you said about us?” she asked.
“Let’s see.” I searched for the first appearance of her name and read aloud to her what I thought were the best bits. She made a sound in her throat, like an unarticulated snort, and when I glanced up at her, she was looking at me skeptically.
“It was just my first impression,” I said.
“But everyone is paper white.”
“I never said that.”
“You sort of did. If you don’t say what anyone is, that’s what people think. White is the default.”
I explained that I write in my journal to figure out how to deal with life and loss, and that death doesn’t perceive colour, and she replied that she hadn’t thought I was one of those white people. My heart sank at disappointing her.
“And?” I said.
“And if you say you’re colour-blind, you’re erasing my experience. You’re taking away who I am.”
“What would you say?”
She slipped into the chair beside mine, and I pushed my laptop toward her. Tapping quickly on the keyboard, she typed the names of everyone in her family and their mix of backgrounds: South Asian and Jewish and North African and European. She hesitated, glanced at me, and beside Bruno’s name added, and unknown. By then it was dark, and she needed to get home. I insisted on walking with her, even though she said she’d be fine. Before we left, I grabbed my bag.
It was the third Tuesday in September. A warm front had displaced the onset of autumn, and the fragrance wafting from the ravine reminded me of my sister’s perfume. I took off my sweater and tied the arms around my waist. We walked downhill toward Sarah’s house, and on the way, stopped in at Loblaws because I’d run out of coffee. While we were there, Sarah browsed the toiletries section and picked up some expensive face cream. In self-checkout, I scanned it along with the coffee and, opening my wallet, saw the edge of the cheque. After paying, I put the coffee in my bag, and she took the cream.
“Thanks, Aunt Joan,” she said.
“No problem. Just one question.”
“Okay.”
“What happened to rejecting the propaganda of the beauty industry?”
She shrugged. “I’m over it.”
“How come?”
“They’re all witches.”
“Who?” We left the store and crossed the street.
“The feminists.”
“I thought they were socialists.”
“Same. Those white girls at my school, they’re always in your face, shouting. And they’re mean.”
“What do they say?”
“I don’t remember. Different things.”
“I’m sorry they’re mean.”
“It’s okay.”
“It isn’t.”
Then, bitterly, “They think they’re better than everyone. They know everything.”
I paused, remembering high school. The world after it is both different and not. I said, “I’ve had colleagues like that.”
“What do you do?”
“Envy them.”
“Why?”
“That confidence. Being so sure you’ve got it right.”
“I’d rather be in the wrong.”
“Then you’ll always have me for company.”
She smiled at me as if I was really her auntie.
I said, not as casually as I intended, “Remember, Sarah. You can text me anytime. No matter what. You’ve got my number.”
We’d arrived at her house, and I would have turned around to go home if Bruno hadn’t been sitting on the porch.
“Come have a glass of wine,” he called, and I followed Sarah up the walkway.
“Did Ruth call the clinic about the urine culture?” I asked as I climbed the stairs.
“She did, and it was negative.”
No bacteria, no infection—then what was causing the symptoms? “I should talk to her.”
“I’ll tell her to call you. She went to bed early again.”
I seated myself on a patio chair, the bag at my feet, while Bruno went inside to get me a glass. He returned with Noah, who was wearing his PJs and wanted to say good night to me. He plopped a kiss on my cheek, then padded back into the house. On the small porch, there was barely an arm’s length between my chair and Bruno’s. In the bubble of night, his voice was soothing. While he talked about a new course he was teaching in wood carving—his first for continuing education, Monday nights at a local high school—I watched a gaggle of teenagers flirting under the street lamp. My wineglass had a sunset streak where a drop of wine had spilled over the rim. I wiped it with my finger. The wind was picking up, the temperature dropping, and I put my sweater on.
“Do you remember being like those kids?” I asked, interrupting him.
“I was too shy to ever be like them.”
“When we first met, I didn’t think you were shy at all.”
“It was awkward. I didn’t know what to expect.”
“I had to bite my tongue when Mom said you look like my father.”
“You mean I don’t?” he asked.
“Maybe your ears,” I said, and he laughed.
It went on like that—friendly, both of us at ease. He said, “I was nervous going up in the elevator to see her at the hospital. I was afraid Sheila would gush.”
“She’s not the gushing type.”
