The Language of Sisters: A Novel Read online

  For me, Jenny simply remained my sister. At five, all I knew was my instinct to protect her, to get her to laugh, and to love her. It took longer for me to realize her differences and then, later, to finally try to escape them.

  • • •

  In less than twenty-four hours my life in San Francisco was pretty well wrapped up, which made me ponder for a moment just how much of a life it actually was. I wasn’t a terribly social person, so there were few friends to call. The weekend baker was more than happy to pick up my shifts while I was away. Barry had promised to take over my daily food deliveries to the park near the bakery, where I had recently befriended a homeless family; I simply could not stand the idea of their little girl going hungry. Shane would take care of my three-legged dog, Moochie, whom I had adopted from the shelter where I sporadically volunteered. I left a detailed feeding-and-walk schedule taped to the refrigerator, still a little fearful that the poor pup would starve to death while I was away. I left a message on my mother’s answering machine, telling her I’d be arriving late that night. I was unsure whether she wasn’t home because she’d gone to work or because she’d gone to Wellman to be with Jenny, but I hoped for the latter.

  My biggest challenge had been in deciding what size suitcase to fill: a small one would say my visit would be short; a larger one might say I was planning to stick around. I finally settled on a medium-size black duffel bag that I’d found stuffed into the back of the closet; I hoped it would simply keep its mouth shut.

  As I packed, I tried not to give in to the sense of trepidation I felt swelling within me. Everything in my mind screamed for me not to go, to stay in San Francisco, where it was safe, where I knew the boundaries of my life. Grabbing a handful of underwear from my dresser and shoving it into my bag, I tried to keep my thoughts focused on Jenny, what she must be feeling, how traumatized she must be.

  I pushed away thoughts of seeing my mother again, facing the house where I grew up, having to deal with everything that happened within its walls. Jenny, I thought as I added two pairs of jeans to the messy pile in my bag. Jenny, I thought again, creating a chant out of her name. I counted the letters in her name, over and over again, keeping the image of my mother’s face out of my mind. It was Jenny who needed me, Jenny I was going home to see. No matter the depth of my fear, nothing else mattered. I wouldn’t let it.

  By nine p.m. I was at the airport, alone. Shane had been appropriately horrified at the news of Jenny’s rape but was waiting on a verdict for the case he had just wrapped up that morning. He didn’t think he could make it out of the courthouse in time to see me off. I was pleasantly surprised, then, to see his tall, athletic figure striding toward me at the gate, his black trench coat flapping furiously around his long legs as he waved his briefcase in the air to catch my eye. I noticed the airline attendant stand up straighter behind her desk when she saw him heading in our direction. Then she was smoothing her platinum blond pageboy and smiling wide with bloodred lips. Shane had this effect on most women. Even in his sharp Armani suit, he had the look of that boy in junior high whose simple touch made you swear to your friends that you’d never again wash whatever body part had come in contact with him. So when he rushed up to me and dropped his briefcase to the floor for an enthusiastic embrace, the attendant lost her smile and looked away, probably amazed that a man as handsome as Shane was attracted to a short, slightly plump redhead like me. Most days it amazed me, as well.

  Returning his hug, I smashed my face into the middle of his broad chest. “I thought you couldn’t make it,” I said accusingly, looking up to him and digging the sharp point of my chin into his breastbone.

  He leaned down and kissed me soundly on the lips, then on the nose and both cheeks. “Mmm. Your freckles taste like cinnamon.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “What about the jury?”

  He grinned. “They came back sooner than I thought they would.”

  “And?” I prodded a bit impatiently, jiggling my arms around his waist, knowing he’d need to tell me his news before we could move on to the subject of my leaving.

  “And you’re looking at the only assistant D.A. to win five consecutive murder cases. I thought the boss would piss his pants, he was so happy with me.”

  I smiled wryly. “Wow.”

  “How are you doing?” he finally asked, tilting his chin down and looking up at me from under his eyebrows.

  “I don’t really know.” I shrugged, my ambivalence punishing him a little for not asking me right away. “I’m more worried about how Jenny is doing.” I was terrified, in fact, to think what she must have gone through, how she must have felt when that bastard climbed on top of her…. I shook my head, trying to erase the horrifying image from my mind.

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” He hugged me again and I basked in the security I felt in his arms, not knowing when I might feel it again.

  “I’ll miss you,” he said, smothering his face into my neck, the roughness of his slight five o’clock shadow sending electric shivers zipping through my body.

  “Me, too,” I said, swallowing a sharp lump in my throat. I waited for him to say he’d go with me, caseload be damned. He’d pack up himself and Moochie and come to Seattle. I waited for him to ask me to stay, to let my mother deal with the situation. But our good-bye was cut short by the final call for my flight. After promising to call him the next day from my mother’s house, I boarded the plane. My stomach lurched as we ascended into the black night sky, and I gripped the plastic armrests with cold fingers.

  “Not a good flier, I take it?” the man in the seat next to me asked good-naturedly.

  I shook my head. “Something like that.” I wasn’t about to explain to a complete stranger the real reason I was so shaky.

  He lifted a substantial flask from his inside jacket pocket and wiggled it at me. “Me, neither.”

  I smiled politely but turned my head away and continued my attempt to hold myself steady. Jenny, I said to myself, making a little rhyme: One-two-three-four-five, J-e-n-n-y. A moment later, a flight attendant strolled by my seat, interrupting my internal chant.

  “Ma’am?” she inquired. “You’re more than welcome to take your seat belt off.”

  I nodded sharply to acknowledge that I’d heard her but did not release my grasp. After she went down the aisle, I kept my seat belt on, wearing it tight, checking its security again and again for the entire flight home.

  • • •

  The midnight air in Seattle was sweet and cool, filling my lungs with much-needed relief from the packaged oxygen I had breathed on the plane. It was the middle of May, but a slight winter chill still tickled my skin as I stepped outside the terminal, the thin cotton sweater and worn Levi’s I had chosen as traveling clothes doing little to protect me from the elements. Sea-Tac Airport was quiet at this hour; only a few scattered taxis lined the pickup lane, and it wasn’t long before I was sitting in the back of one headed north on I-5 toward the West Seattle exit. I shivered violently as I shifted against the cold leather of the seat. “Could you turn the heat on, please?” I asked my driver.

  Reaching for the knobs on the dash, he cocked his head around to look at me. “Must’ve picked myself up a California girl.”

  I smiled halfheartedly, vigorously rubbing my biceps with both hands. “I’ve lived most of my life here, actually.”

  He nodded sharply. “You going home, then?”

  “Looks like it,” I said, the apprehension I felt taking up too much space in my chest, leaving little room for air. I certainly didn’t feel like chatting, so I turned to look out the window, hopeful the driver would take the hint and leave me alone for the rest of the ride. The lights of downtown twinkled before me, the Columbia Tower looming over the rest of the buildings as a father does over his children. The outline of the city looked odd to me, but it took a moment or two for me to realize what was missing.

  Though I had watched the news footage of the Kingdome being demolished, the gray, hatbox-lik
e structure had remained in my memories: the time I had spent there at Mariners games with my dad, sitting on the hard metal bleachers of the one hundred level, eating Red Vines and popcorn as he sipped a Big Gulp–size beer and hollered at the players. I smiled a bit, remembering how much I enjoyed that time with my father each season, just the two of us heading out for a Saturday afternoon game.

  Those outings stopped when Jenny began regressing again, her spine curving into a deeper S than was safe for the survival of her organs, the doctors telling us she might need major back surgery to correct the problem. My father began folding in on himself, spending more time at the homes he built for other people and less time at his own. Gradually, he became less like a person, less like a member of our family, and more like a shadow moving along the walls, jumping out to frighten us at unexpected moments.

  I closed my eyes and a vision filled my mind: my father’s broad-shouldered back moving into the darkness of Jenny’s room in the middle of the night; the door closing softly, no lights turning on; the murmur of his voice behind those walls; the soft, insistent squeak of the bedsprings. My stomach swirled in acid at what I rarely allowed myself to think about. I willed the memory away.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the driver prompting me to get out of the car. The trip from the airport had gone by too quickly, and suddenly I was in front of my childhood home. I sat immobile, stuck to the seat. “Help you with your bag?” the driver offered.

  “No. Thanks, though,” I said, pushing the fare through the slot. I added a hefty tip for his silence during the ride.

  He saw the size of the tip and gave me a happy, yellow-toothed grin. “Peace, sister.”

  “Peace,” I said as I opened the door and went to grab my bag from the trunk. The driver tooted the horn lightly as he pulled away, and I had to quell the urge to hail him back. I longed to be anywhere but where I was; I wanted someone to save me from what I was about to do. I stood on the sidewalk and shivered again in the night air, my breath a silver cloud escaping me. How small the one-story Craftsman-style house looked. A child’s playhouse in a backyard, not the seemingly rambling home I had lived in for eighteen years. The A-line white trim seemed closer to the ground; the four square windows on the front of the mustard yellow house looked about the size of dinner plates. Even the fragrant red cedar in the front yard looked shorter to me as I moved toward the crumbling brick porch.

  A shaft of light flooded the steps as the door opened; my mother stood in the entryway. She hugged herself against the night’s chill. The first thing I noticed was her hair. Once long past her shoulders, it had been cut into a sleek bob that followed the edge of her jaw, accenting the sharp point of her chin. Like the rest of her body, the line of her neck was still elegant and long, her head balanced perfectly at its top. Her clothes were plain: a navy blue sweat suit and white socks. I froze at the bottom of the steps, anxiety bubbling within me. We stared at each other a moment longer.

  Mom was the first to speak. “Come in,” she said. Her voice was flat, careful.

  I nodded, dipped my head down, and ascended into the house, its familiar scent assaulting me. The whisper of my father’s pack-a-day habit still clung to the yellowed walls. I was surprised that our mother hadn’t painted to erase any hint of him. The ceiling seemed too close to my head. Had the house always been this small? Did I make it larger in my memory? I hadn’t grown any since leaving, yet I felt like a giant stumbling through a dollhouse. I dropped my bag to the worn gray carpet.

  My mother stepped toward me, and we hugged awkwardly, our bodies barely touching. She was warm and smelled of sleep. She patted me in a stiff gesture, then pulled back to look at me. “You’ve gotten so pretty,” she said, reaching to touch my hair, then stopping quickly as though she had thought better of it. “Your hair turned out so much darker than your father’s.”

  I nodded again, not trusting my voice. While I had inherited my father’s bold hair color and my mother’s slanted mossy green eyes, my shorter, more voluptuous build was a gift of heredity from a grandmother I had never met. Jenny had been the lucky recipient of both our parents’ slender tendencies. I fingered my copper curls self-consciously, keeping my eyes to the ground. I wrestled with the simultaneous urge to either slap this woman or throw myself into her arms, weeping. I kept every muscle, every nerve in my body rigid and tense, fighting for control. As we stood in the light of the hallway, I took in the details of how the last ten years had changed her. Her once-smooth, pearlescent skin was now crinkled, like fine white tissue paper. The lines around her mouth sliced her cheeks in deep parentheses, and the gray in her chestnut hair grew in thick stripes on each side of her face. Her eyes were the same, in perfect echo of my own. Our eyes were the only indication we were related. Without them, we might simply be strangers passing each other on the street.

  “I’m exhausted,” I finally said, tearing my gaze away from her to the watch on my wrist. It seemed forever since that morning in the bakery when I first heard Jenny’s call. It seemed a lifetime ago.

  “Of course,” she agreed and gestured for me to move past her and into the living room. I noticed a few tan age spots on the back of her hand, and it suddenly struck me that my mother was growing old and that I was no longer the child who had lived within these walls. I had grown, gotten stronger. I could get through this. I would get through it.

  I picked up my bag, and my body moved by remembered feel through the house; Mom followed close behind, watching me assess the living room. The furniture was the same: dark wood tables and blue floral couches surrounding a brick fireplace. I glanced down the dimly lit hallway that led from the living room to my parents’ bedroom and saw that family pictures still covered that particular wall: bright, false images of a happy existence. I wondered whom my mother thought she was fooling.

  I proceeded through the living room and into the small, square kitchen, noting the chipped yellow paint on the chairs and the severely dated, rust-colored appliances. I stepped carefully down the short hallway from the kitchen, past the bathroom door, then paused outside my old room. My mother stood right behind me. “Am I staying in here?” I asked her.

  “If that’s all right with you.”

  I turned the doorknob. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  She didn’t answer me but reached to one side of the door and flipped on the light switch. The room hadn’t changed much: faded red-rose-flowered paper still dressed the walls; matching bedspread and curtains completed the look. I set my duffel bag down on the hardwood floor and went to sit on the bed.

  “I put on fresh sheets,” Mom said, gesturing to where I sat. “I don’t use this room much anymore. You might want to open the window.”

  “Okay.” I patted the bedspread nervously, then opened and shut the nightstand drawer. Unspoken words sparked electric between us. “When can I see Jenny?”

  “I took the day off, so we’ve got an appointment at Wellman at nine.” She started to leave, then turned back to look at me. “Is that too early?”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  She paused again before shutting the door behind her. “I’m glad you came, honey.” The look she gave me was an open, fragile thing, full of hope; I was not expecting it.

  I nodded, though unwilling to say I agreed.

  “Welcome home,” she said, and a shiver ran through me at the same words Jenny had sent to my heart the moment the plane touched down.

  • • •

  My call to Shane first thing in the morning caught him in his car on the way to the office. “Let me get my headset on,” he said when he heard my voice. He talked on his cell phone so much while he was driving, I had insisted he start using one. After a moment of freeway noise and plastic rustling in my ear, he came back. “Okay, all set. So you got there okay?” he asked.

  “All in one piece.” I ran my finger down a long crack in the textured plaster wall. I stood in the hall across from my old bedroom door. As a teenager, since the phone was so close to the kitchen, I u
sed to drag it inside my room for the illusion of privacy. I quashed the urge to do the same now. I was an adult; I didn’t have anything to hide. “I’ll see Jenny in an hour or so,” I told Shane.

  “Did you talk to your mom yet?” he asked loudly, his words broken up by static in the connection. “Is Jenny going to have the baby?”

  “I pretty much went straight to bed when I got here. I doubt she’ll have it, though. An abortion seems like it’d be the smartest thing to do.”

  “Um-hmm,” Shane agreed. “Tricky legal issue, though. Who’s her guardian?”

  “My mom.” I sighed, frustrated that he seemed more concerned about the legal aspect of the situation than about the turbulent feelings that went along with it.

  “What about your dad?”

  Acid emotion rose up and burned the tender flesh of my throat. “He’s not involved. He gave up his rights years ago.” I stared at the door to Jenny’s room, only a few feet from my own, feeling my father’s presence in the house wrapped around me even though he was gone. I hadn’t shared the details of my childhood with Shane; in fact, I hadn’t shared them with anyone.

  “Didn’t you tell me he pays for your sister’s care?”

  “Yes, but it was part of the divorce agreement that he’d get to sign away any responsibility for Jenny if he took care of her expenses. Nice, huh?” My voice rattled as I spoke, and I pressed my forehead against the rough wall. “God. What am I doing here? I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Shane casually assured me. He didn’t know, didn’t understand what I had come back to. He didn’t know how I had left things. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked. “Do you want me to call the D.A.’s office in Seattle and see what I can find out about the rape case?”

  “I’m not even sure if there is a case.” I pulled away from the wall and stood up straight, rubbing my forehead with my free hand.

  “Couldn’t hurt to call.” Static interrupted us again, and we were suddenly cut off.