Not my sister, p.18
Not My Sister, page 18
Angie raised her expressive brows. “Are you going to get that? It might be important.”
When I failed to respond, she turned the phone around and stared at the screen.
“It’s from your mom.” She rotated the phone back into my line of sight. “It’s probably the letter.”
I took a breath and closed my eyes. I reminded myself who I was and how far I had come. Nothing my sister could do or say had any power over me now. I was beyond her reach. I had spent two years sloughing off the unappreciated big sister role I had played with her: the one with the car, the one with a credit card that wasn’t maxed out and the one who was never too busy.
I was also the one she could ditch. Like the time she had left my thirtieth birthday party after a mere ten minutes because Carlo had called to ask her to hang out—a guy who had thrown her dog out the window and pushed her down two flights of stairs. But she had to go. I understood, right? There would be plenty of birthdays to celebrate. Why was I upset? I was so dramatic.
Above all, I had been the keeper of her secrets and her angst—until I gave her an ultimatum about Carlo: leave the guy, or don’t call me when you’re in a jam. She broke what little sisterly bond remained between us by choosing him over me. In fact, soon after my ultimatum, she ran off with him to Italy without telling anyone. Even Angie. And then on to Amsterdam. And then we lost her.
There hadn’t been plenty of birthdays to celebrate. There hadn’t been one.
I had grown a lot since she had “died,” and that growth was something no one could take from me.
“Jessica, are you okay?”
I took a second deep breath and swallowed, steeling myself and wondering at the same time if I were turning into my mother after all. Maybe she had steeled herself one too many times in life, and that was what had hardened her into a stone-faced workaholic. I opened my eyes.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
I grabbed my phone and opened the text. The image blurred. I squinted, trying to bring it into focus. I pinched the flesh at the bridge of my nose, squeezing back tears.
“Want me to read it out loud?” Angie asked, reaching for my phone.
“Yeah. Thanks. I’ve actually never read the whole thing.”
“Okay. Here goes.”
November 23, 2013
Dear Olivia—
It is almost your birthday. Your twenty-sixth birthday. Where has the time gone? I remember the day you were born, how I worked at the office until late afternoon, went home and called the midwife. Your grandmother Lorraine was there, and we sat around eating macaroons and watching Rodney Dangerfield’s comedy special until your father got home. We should have been watching an intellectual French film with an enigmatic ending—but there you go…
I was so happy to have you. And now that you are all grown up and living so far away, and so distant from the family, I often look back and wonder about the dynamics that brought us to this place.
Jessica was up here at The Farm recently, questioning her path and wondering where it’s headed. Rob was sitting there ostensibly watching football, but we got into a discussion about my family and how we are all such distant workaholics. I’ve been thinking about that discussion ever since.
The gist of the discussion was that my mother raised her six kids to be individuals. Plus, with our genetics—on the fringes of Asperger Syndrome, I think—we grew up a few degrees separated from other human beings. My brother Rick and I, having had more time to grow up with our biological father, were the more “normal” of the children. But that’s not saying much. We are both beings who feel more comfortable working than interacting with others. We are genetically predisposed to silence, overwork and creative focus.
And then I think of you and Jess—born to a fringe parent. You two are probably more social than I could ever imagine being. No wonder you both feel abandoned in some way. You have normal inclinations and expect to get a normal reaction from your family. Perhaps that family is simply incapable of providing what you need.
I know it’s difficult and perhaps you’ve already come to the same conclusion, but do you think you could recast the next two-thirds of your life? Cast them in a different light? Maybe it would help to think of your family as being genetically incapable of loving you the way you long to be loved. It’s hard to think this way, I know, but if we were physically incapable, you would understand. A person without legs would never be expected to walk to you. But it’s harder to see that a mother raised to be emotionally distant has similar, though somewhat invisible, limitations.
It sounds lame. I know what you’re thinking: if you were worth loving or I tried harder, everything would be golden. You are worth loving. That is undisputed. And I do love you. Very much. But it will never be the kind of love that is the warm, bake-me-cookies, woolen shawl and hugs kind of love. I simply must be missing that gene, or my outward expressions of love were rebuffed enough times to make me pull back. Or I simply wasn’t raised with hugs and kisses and unconditional love, so I don’t know how to provide them.
It’s taken me a lifetime to realize that this is what I am and who I am. Why do I need to be fixed? Why fight it? I am not “normal.” And maybe I don’t want to be…
I know you’ve been struggling lately and are convinced something is fundamentally off with you. Perhaps it’s simply your genetics.
I guess what I’m trying to say to you is that if you have inherited the family “individuality,” you might try accepting it (instead of fighting it for years like I did) and use it for all it’s worth. Don’t try to be normal. No great artist was ever “normal.” Don’t opt for the conventional life. Sure, being an individual can be lonely. But on the flip side, convention can be a ball and chain on the soul.
If you were here, I’d take you out for your birthday and we would sit at the Claremont Hotel and talk for hours and hours about love and life and the enigmatic human heart. How I miss our painting sessions and our talks!
I hope you have a good birthday, Olivia. Wish I was there to see your garret in Amsterdam. I envy you that space!
Love,
Mumsy
Angie put down the phone. “Man,” she said. “Talk about heavy.”
“My mother was never one to send those sparkly greeting cards.”
“Kinda obvious.”
“I know she loves us, though. In her own way.”
“Yeah, that comes through.” Angie slid the iPhone toward me. “But that’s true about your mom. The no hug thing.”
“She isn’t unfriendly, but...”
“No, she’s cool to talk to. Really. I love talking to your mom.”
I nodded. “So, I guess Olivia took the advice in that letter to heart.”
“Being unconventional.”
“Yes. And backing away from a world that is always trying to change her.”
“Even her family, though?” Angie slumped on the frame of her elbows. “Even me?”
“Especially us. Think of it. How many times did we criticize her decisions?”
“She did crazy things, Jess. Marrying that illegal immigrant and not telling anyone but you. Getting fake boobs and that infection. All hush hush. Running off to Hawaii. Running off to Italy.”
“And all we did was harp at her. Especially when she went back to Carlo.”
Angie frowned. “I mean, wasn’t that our duty? He pushed her down the stairs, Jess. He pushed her in front of a freaking truck!”
I didn’t say anything. Angie had a point.
“I was her friend, Jess. I didn’t want that asshole to keep hurting her. I couldn’t just shut up.”
“I guess she didn’t want the advice. Not from us.”
“So, she’s living the life of a Masked Artist and doing her thing, no matter the cost to those who love her.”
“She doesn’t think we love her. That’s the point. We never accepted her behavior, so in her way of thinking, we never actually loved her.”
“So, what do we do?”
“I don’t know, Ange. I just want to talk to her. If I could just talk to her…”
My voice cracked and broke off as the stress of the last few days descended upon me and filled my eyes to the brim. Tears spilled over and rolled down my cheeks. I covered my face with my hands to hide my grief from the other diners while sobs wracked my chest. But the more I tried to hide my distress, the worse it became. I was deep in the monster wave.
Angie stroked my arm. “Jess,” she murmured.
“She’s my sister,” I sobbed. “My little sister. I can’t let her think she is so unloved, that she’s better off dead. That’s what two years ago was all about, Ange. The ultimate cry for help. And we never got it. We never doubted the police.”
“There was no reason you should have.”
“I should have trusted my instincts. I should have had faith in her. I knew something wasn’t right.”
“She didn’t engender faith in people. You, especially. She took advantage of you so many times.”
“Still, I’m her sister. I should have made them prove it was a homicide. That Basia must have killed her. Or this Elena person. Or that there was some kind of deadly menage à trois going on. Not suicide.”
I wiped my cheeks and sat back. My eyeballs burned like hot coals in my head. My mascara was probably a mess. I didn’t care.
“Don’t do this to yourself, Jessica. You could not have known any of this.”
I squared my shoulders. My chest heaved.
“You don’t have to fix this,” Angie added. “This is all her. Her decision.”
“No.”
“She doesn’t want us to bother her. You heard what that guy Joe said.”
“No. I don’t believe it,” My words clung to my sticky swollen lips. “And I’m not going.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not going back. Not until I speak to her. Face to face.”
I lifted my bleary eyes to stare at Angie. The hot tears I’d shed had burned a path straight to my heart, hardening my resolve to stone. I knew that I had to stay until I got answers.
23
The Autopsy
“Speak to her?” Angie asked. “How do you propose to do that?”
“I don’t know. Go back to Utrecht. Track down her manager. Sit at that ex-pat bar until she comes in, if I have to. Something.”
“It could take weeks.”
“I don’t care. You don’t have to hang around if you don’t want to. But I’m staying.”
“Well, like I said, I have to go back. I’m teaching a bunch of kids the finer points of hip-hop, starting Monday.”
“I understand, Ange.”
“What about Elena Visser?”
“We need to tell Lt. Daan about that for sure. I’ll see if he can meet us today sometime. Then we’ll get a ticket back to the States for you.”
Tasks all around. Work. Busy hands. God, I had definitely turned into my mother.
Before I could text Lt. Daan, he texted me. He had received the autopsy report from The Hague. Could we meet Friday afternoon? He had a full schedule until then. We set a time, and then I found a ticket for Angie to return to Oakland early Friday morning.
That night, we went to The San Francisco Bar, hoping to spot our quarry, but she didn’t show.
* * *
On Friday, I took the train to the airport with Angie to make sure she got to her flight, and then rode back to the hotel. Dawn peeked through the buildings in the east as I ambled along the canal to Dam Square and my hotel. I felt unfettered and alone now that Angie had left the city. My days here wouldn’t be the same without her offbeat humor, steady companionship and encouragement.
I walked into the lobby. Hotel staff were stringing Christmas lights around the doorways and arranging sprays of pine on side tables. Christmas. Already? I wondered if I would still be here, waiting to talk to my sister, when Christmas arrived. Should I put a limit on my time here?
I couldn’t just yet.
I spent the morning doing social media sleuthing. First, I scrolled through Olivia’s Facebook page, which was still active. People posted birthday greetings to her and ‘I miss you’ posts, even though she was two years gone. I made a list of the places in Amsterdam where she had taken a photo. Sadly, she was like my mother in that respect. She didn’t take photographs very often. She preferred to be “in the moment,” and many times didn’t remember to recharge her phone.
I also scrolled through Ren’s Facebook page. I even tried Carlo’s. But his information was unavailable to me, as mine was to him.
The exercise shrouded my despondent mood with an additional layer of melancholy. By early afternoon, I had to get out of the hotel room. I decided to visit Ren at work, to see if he had additions to my list of where I might run into Olivia.
We went to a coffee shop near his building to talk. Hoping to lighten my mood, I bought a “fortified” cookie and a latte. He ordered a cappuccino, and we found a table near the bakery display case, which was filled with fancy cupcakes and huge iced cookies.
“How are you doing?” he asked, unwinding his scarf and draping it on the back of the chair.
“Okay, I guess. Angelina went home this morning.”
He nodded and gazed down at me. “Maybe you should think about going home, too. I can see in your eyes that—”
“I can’t. Not yet.”
“Like you said before, it might be a mad goose chase.” He sank to the chair.
“Don’t you want to know for sure, Ren? To know why?”
He sighed and slid his small cup toward him. “To be perfectly honest, Jessica, no.”
“Why not?” His comment took me by surprise. I had always considered Ren to be the stable one, the guy who would never lose control, the person who always had his affairs in order.
“I’ve thought a lot about it since the other day in that garden.”
“And?”
“I have a wife now. A partnership. It’s steady. Beatrix doesn’t rip my heart out every other week. I guess that’s what I need.”
He raised his uncertain brown eyes as if seeking my acceptance before he accepted himself, and then he glanced away. He sighed again, and the sound told me that this recent decision was still ebbing and flowing—not quite solidified.
Perhaps his definition of self had been defined by Olivia’s influence as much as mine had.
“So, you’re giving up on finding out what happened?”
He gazed down at his cup. “It’s a self-defense thing, Jessica. I can’t return to the past. No good will come of it.”
“That’s what Detective Morrel says.”
“Perhaps he is right. And you should go home.”
“No.” I sat back in my chair, adamant about the way forward. “We didn’t fight for her two years ago. We all accepted what we were told. Like we didn’t care.”
“I cared.” His words shot out with such vehemence that the froth in his cup jiggled.
I touched his hand. “I know you did.”
He pulled his hand back. “But it never came to anything with her. Why should it now? Why torture myself?”
He glanced up at me again. The whites of his small eyes had turned red.
“Did you know she had been pregnant, Jessica? That she got an abortion?”
“Yeah, I saw the medical bills in her stuff.”
“In June. The decision nearly tore us apart. We fought. We cried. We went to therapy.”
“I know her birth control sometimes failed,” I put in, “because of the antidepressants she took.”
“And then, when I was on that trip to California, a couple months later, you know what she told me?”
“What?”
“That the father was Carlo. Not me. Carlo.”
I stared, speechless at his news. But then again, I was not surprised. Not with Olivia.
His gaze turned inward, as he rubbed the sides of his jaw with both hands and then slid them to the back of his neck. He looked down, massaging the nape of his neck, and I worried that he might burst into tears. If he started to cry, I surely would. My spirit felt as fragile as the spun sugar decorations on the cupcakes behind him.
“Was it true, I ask myself now?” he continued. “Or just a way to stick the knife into me?”
“Surely—”
“Because that’s what she did to get back at me. To push me away. Things like that.”
“God.”
“Truth or lie. You never knew with her.”
“I know, Ren.”
“And that’s why I didn’t return her calls on that trip. I wanted to—I don’t know—feed her some of her own medicine.”
“I knew something had gone wrong back then. But she wouldn’t say. We thought you had cheated on her or something.”
“Never.”
“Just tired of the games.”
“Yes. I wasn’t like that usually. I’m not a bad guy. If she begged me to come back, I always would. But I was at the end of my leash. And I just let the phone ring and ring.”
“She deserved it, Ren.”
“But it has haunted me ever since. What if I had reached out just one more time? Told her that no matter what, I loved her. Would she still be with us?” He shot a hot stare my way. “And to know she might be? And she has let me suffer?”
I watched him work through his outrage and heartbreak, feeling every hot shard of pain with him. “You can’t know what she was thinking then, Ren. God.”
He lowered his head.
“You see now,” he said to the surface of the table. “That I cannot open my heart anymore. Not to her. It is closed. I must close it. It is better for me that way.”
He stood up and grabbed his scarf but did not look at me. “I can’t see you again, Jessica. I’m sorry.”
“Ren…”
“Please…no more.” He squeezed my shoulder briefly and then strode out of the shop. The scarf in his hand dangled in the air behind him, like the memories that dogged him.
After Ren left, I sat at the table feeling numb from his emotional outburst. And frustrated. I hadn’t got any information from him as to places Olivia might frequent in the city. And now I never would.
