The Wicked Sister

by Karen Dionne

  Hope. Such a meager consolation for people who have no way out. It’s impossible to imagine what our lives will be like going forward. Will Diana always be a threat to her sister? Will we have to supervise their interactions for years? Decades? Their entire lives? Will Diana get worse as she gets older? Will she ever have any semblance of a normal life, or is she doomed to be the outcast, the monster the villagers surround with pitchforks, the demon roaming the darkest parts of the forest that everyone fears?

  “I realize this is a lot to take in,” Dr. Merritt says. “Do you have any questions?”

  Peter and I shake our heads. I’m sure I’ll have a million after we leave the office, but right now, I just want this to go away.

  “Then I’ll leave you two alone. Take all the time you need.”

  Dr. Merritt shakes Peter’s hand and squeezes my shoulder, then lets himself out a side door into his private office. I can’t help feeling jealous. He gets to go back to his life, whereas he just destroyed ours.

  The minutes tick by.

  “A psychopath,” Peter says at last. “I guess we should have named Diana ‘Norman Bates’ or ‘Baby Jane.’”

  “Don’t. Don’t you dare say those names alongside our daughter’s.”

  “It was a joke.”

  “It’s not funny.”

  Peter drags a hand through his hair, then turns his chair around to face me and leans forward and puts his hands on my knees. “I understand you’re upset. So am I. This is terrible news. But attacking each other isn’t going to change anything. I’m as stunned as you are.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Peter hands me a wad of Kleenex from the box placed conveniently on Dr. Merritt’s desk. I wonder how many boxes his office goes through in a week.

  “We can’t tell anyone,” I say after I’ve dried my eyes and blown my nose. “Not a soul.”

  “Not even Charlotte? She knows what Diana did. She has a right to know why.”

  “Not even Charlotte. I mean it, Peter. The only way to keep this a secret is to keep it to ourselves. As bad as this is now, if people find out about Diana’s diagnosis, it will be a thousand times worse. Everyone will start looking at her sideways—if they’re willing to be around her at all.”

  Peter purses his lips. I can tell there’s more he wants to say, but at last he nods. “All right. We’ll do it your way. We will never speak that word again.”

  “Thank you.”

  The victory feels hollow—not because I don’t believe that Peter is sincere in granting me this concession, but because of the dreadful circumstances that sparked the battle. If Diana had a visible handicap such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy, or if she was missing an arm or a leg—even if she had a better-understood psychological condition such as schizophrenia or if she was bipolar, it’d be different. There are support groups for families dealing with these issues. People would understand. They’d offer help.

  But no one is sympathetic to the mother of a psychopath. To the mother of a girl who tried to kill her infant sister. A girl who let a toddler drown in a swimming pool.

  Or did Diana push the boy in?

  TWELVE

  NOW

  Rachel

  It’s six o’clock. Trevor and I have been sitting in the pair of leather armchairs in front of the fireplace in the cold and the dark for what feels like hours. I don’t know if he’s hanging around because he’s still hoping to interview Diana and Charlotte, or if he’s lingering so I won’t have to wait for them alone. Either way, at this point, I just want him gone. I understand that’s not a particularly gracious sentiment on my part, but the day has been so unsettling: checking out of the hospital, seeing the lodge again after so many years, walking across the place where my parents died, dealing with the flood of memories that being here evokes, and talking to the ravens—I really need time alone to process it all. It wasn’t until I pointed out that it’s entirely possible that Diana and Charlotte could be traveling and might not come home tonight at all that he finally gave up.

  Now as I walk him to his Jeep, it’s so dark I can barely see the pair of ravens circling overhead. Ravens don’t normally fly at night, which makes me think that this pair are as eager to talk to me as I am to talk to them.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I say, perhaps a little too quickly as he slides behind the wheel. It isn’t only the ravens. At some point as I was showing him around the lodge, I realized I’d caught a break by coming home when my aunt and sister aren’t here. Explaining why I’d suddenly shown up unannounced was going to be awkward enough, never mind explaining why I also brought along a reporter. Trevor and I came up with a cover story during the drive about how he’s doing an article on Michigan’s ten most beautiful log cabins, and from there he was going to work the conversation around to the day my parents died, but now, unless the Fates are conspiring against me and he and Charlotte and Diana pass one another on the road, I won’t have to use it.

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” he asks. “I really don’t like dropping you off and driving away.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll just grab a bite to eat and go straight to bed.” I should have offered Trevor something to eat while we were waiting, I realize now, but it’s too late to do anything about it. Clearly, I’m going to have to work on my social skills.

  “Okay, then. Now that I’ve seen this place, I’d like to do some more research on it and come back in a day or two. Maybe get some pictures when the lighting is better. Hopefully talk to your aunt and your sister.”

  “You’re welcome anytime. Just remember there’s no phone service at the lodge, so I can’t promise they’ll be here when you come back.”

  “Understood. Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing you again.”

  Something about the way he says this makes me think he’s not just being polite. That there could one day be something between us makes my stomach flutter. Occasionally someone at the hospital would show an interest in me, but I never let it go anywhere because I had no future, and also because two people with mental problems hooking up really didn’t seem like a good idea. Now I wonder what it would be like to have both a future and someone to share it with. If it turns out I didn’t kill my mother, my life will be a blank slate, and I will have the only piece of chalk, an idea that is both empowering and intimidating considering the many possibilities. It’s not just the big things like where I’ll go to school if I want to go to school, or what I’ll do for work if I want to work, but the thousand and one everyday decisions that even now are entirely under my control. I could go into the kitchen right now and eat peanut butter straight out of the jar if I wanted to or take a bag of cookies to my room without having to worry about somebody stealing it and keep it there until the cookies are gone. I can get up when I want, go to bed when I want, go for a walk or read a book or sit around doing absolutely nothing if this is what I choose to do. Fortunately, I have a plan.

  I stand in the driveway and wave until Trevor is out of sight, then hurry inside and up the back stairs to my childhood bedroom. I should probably look for something to eat before it gets too dark to see what I’m doing, but I have a date with a couple of ravens.

  I open the window and stick out my head. “Hello? Are you there? Are you awake? Can we talk?”

  Nothing.

  “Hello?”

  No answer. Not the slightest ruffle of a feather. Stupid ravens. Stupid Trevor for hanging around so long. Stupid me for thinking that the answers I seek will come as quickly and easily as a single conversation.

  I leave the window open a crack and shake out a cigarette. The lodge is absolutely silent, the crackle of burning paper and tobacco the only sounds. The hospital was never quiet: bells clanging, trays clattering, footsteps echoing, patients screaming and crying. This feels apocalyptic, as though the world has been destroyed and I and the insects and animals are the only ones l
eft. I swear I can hear my blood flowing.

  I take a long drag and stare out at the trees, alone with my thoughts in a way I haven’t been in years. Fifteen, to be exact. I say the words out loud, “Fifteen years, fifteen years,” but the fire of my anger has gone out. Here in the last place on earth where I was truly happy, all I feel is sorrow. Even if I didn’t kill my mother, there’s no regaining the life I should have had. My parents are dead. Nothing can change that. They will never again walk these rooms, never roam the forest they loved. It guts me to think that in a few years, I will be older than they ever were.

  I smoke the cigarette down to the filter and toss the butt out the window, then close the window and go down the back stairs. The kitchen is as dark as a tomb. I make my way to the pantry by feel and open the junk drawer and pat down its contents: pencils, pens, scissors, a rubber band, screws, and other unidentifiable stuff, until finally wedged in the back of the drawer, a flashlight. I pull it out and switch it on and shine the light around the pantry, looking for a can of baked beans or maybe some chili, and score a can of chicken noodle soup. I open the can and dump the soup into a bowl. The broth is greasy and cold, and the noodles are stiff, but I’ve eaten worse.

  I pour a glass of water and carry it upstairs to the sleeping porch so I can keep an eye out for Charlotte and Diana. It’s cold, but I don’t mind. I’ve noticed that people make a big deal about the temperature, complaining if it’s a few degrees warmer or colder than they’d like, as if the world and its climate revolved around them. I guess when you grow up essentially out of doors, you’re more forgiving of the weather. Anyway, until Diana and Charlotte come back and turn on the generator, it’s not that much warmer inside.

  To the east is the clearing where my mother set up her observation blind. No doubt that’s where my love affair with bears began. It’s harder to explain why I’m still stuck on bears at the age of twenty-six. All I can think is that I must be like those boys and girls who love dinosaurs and butterflies and grow up to become paleontologists and entomologists.

  To the west is the meadow where Uncle Max set up our gun range. Max wasn’t really my uncle, but he was my aunt Charlotte’s long-term boyfriend, so Diana and I called him “uncle” to tease them. Max was also my first serious crush. With his shaggy blond hair and bright blue eyes and a smile that could charm a grizzly, as my father used to say, I thought he was as handsome as a prince from a fairy tale. Diana and I used to compete openly for his attention. Or perhaps she only pretended to like him because she knew that I did.

  Wanting to impress Max is the reason I learned how to shoot. Max and Charlotte and Diana used to go out to the gun range whenever my parents were gone, and while I hated guns, and had no desire to handle a gun or to fire one, I hated being left out even more. So, when Max invited me to come with them a few months before my eleventh birthday, I wasn’t about to say no. And after he wrapped his arms around me as he knelt beside me and slid his finger through the trigger alongside mine and pressed me tightly against him to absorb the recoil the first time I fired my rifle—well, I’d have crawled to the ends of the earth across broken glass if he’d asked me to. After that, I sometimes pretended I needed more help than I did. Knowing what I do now about pedophilia and sexual aberrations, his behavior seems more than a little creepy, but back then it didn’t set off any alarm bells. I knew he only had eyes for Charlotte.

  I wonder now whatever happened to him, if he is still around, if he and Charlotte are still a couple. I know so little about Diana’s and Charlotte’s day-to-day lives. I don’t know if they are stay-at-homes or gadabouts, if they are early birds or night owls, which of them does the cooking or if they take turns, who turns on the generator in the morning and again at night, who makes sure the fuel oil tank is topped off and orders in firewood, if they go to the Cobblestone Bar on Friday nights to listen to Max play the way we sometimes used to do, if they have friends over for drinks or to play cards, or if they prefer to keep to themselves. It’s been two years since I’ve seen either of them. They used to visit a lot more often when I was younger. I guess after I became an adult, they figured I didn’t need them.

  I tuck the flashlight under my arm and carry my dishes downstairs and rinse them in the sink and put everything back where I found it, then wander the rooms with my flashlight feeling like a burglar until eventually, I find myself standing outside the door to my father’s den. His desk is strewn with papers. I can almost smell the tang of the swamp that clung to him constantly, an earthiness that I didn’t know I missed until I remembered it just now. People who know my history assume I favored my mother because of our shared love of bears, but my father and I were also close. When I was little and I would wander into this room, my father would stop what he was doing and lift me onto his lap and explain what he was working on as if I were old enough to understand things like profit-and-loss statements and real estate taxes and checkbook balances.

  I shine the flashlight over the desk. My father’s desk used to be filled with photos. My favorite was a picture he took of me in which I’m sitting in the back of our canoe holding up a shiny rock bass—my first fish—and bursting with pride and delight. This was before I became a vegetarian.

  But this desk is no longer my father’s, and the photograph is gone. Instead, my flashlight beam lands on a glossy, trifold brochure. Lost Lake Development, the heading reads above a picture of a lake that looks identical to ours. Inside, the brochure touts the development’s selling points: forty-five miles from Marquette, a pristine wilderness paradise, four thousand acres that have never been logged, five-acre parcels with full lake access, will build to suit.

  For the briefest of moments, I think that this brochure is left over from when my parents lived here. Developers would sometimes contact them wanting to build cabins or luxury homes around our lake, and sometimes the proposals would include a mock-up like this. But it’s highly unlikely that one of those proposals would still be hanging around, and this brochure looks new. A business card paperclipped to the back along with a handwritten note—Great talking to you! Hope to hear from you soon!—that includes the developer’s cell phone number. There was no cell phone service over most of the U.P. when my parents lived at the lodge.

  I sit down in my father’s chair. There’s only one reason for this brochure to be front and center on what is now my sister’s desk: Diana is seriously considering this proposal. The thought makes my blood boil. Our parents vowed that they would never sell so much as a square inch of our property. What’s more, they made Diana and me promise that after we inherited, we would do the same. It seems my sister wasn’t listening.

  As to why she is considering this proposal, the missing weapons tell the story. The most expensive weapons. I’d bet my share of the inheritance that they are not on loan to a museum as I initially assumed. Diana has probably been selling off valuables for years. The lodge is so full of stuff, she could have gotten rid of half of it, and I’d never know. Maybe the lodge needs major repairs, or the property taxes are in arrears and the lodge and the acreage are about to go back to the state. Or perhaps she’s been indulging in too much travel or spending our money foolishly in other ways. Either way, it’s clear that I shouldn’t have signed off on our tax returns without asking questions, should have consulted with one of the lawyer or CPA patients at the hospital to make sure that everything was as it should be, should have been more involved.

  But antique guns and Tiffany lamps and Navajo rugs can be sold without my knowledge or consent. There’s only one thing my sister can’t sell without my signature or my okay: our land. She knows this, and yet she’s in talks with a developer. Clearly, there’s something I’m missing. I dig through the rest of the papers, and when I find a plain manila file folder with my name on the tab, my stomach drops. Inside is a completed form along with an instruction sheet for filling it out: “Marquette County Probate Court Involuntary Mental Illness Proceedings, Helpful Information & Refe
rences.”

  Diana is going to have me committed. This is how she is planning to develop our property without my consent. I’ve seen this happen to other patients, but I never dreamed it would happen to me. An old person suddenly changes his will, a CEO starts making what shareholders believe are off-the-wall decisions, and the next thing you know, they’re locked up in the mental hospital, with no say over their affairs. Next up will be a psych evaluation, which—given that I’ve spent the past fifteen years in a mental hospital—I am certain to fail. All the things that I was hoping to accomplish if I can prove that I didn’t kill my mother—going to a university, getting a biology degree, taking up my mother’s research, living at the lodge, marrying, maybe one day having children—none of it is going to happen. Diana is going to be my legal guardian again, and I will have no say about where I live or what I do for the rest of my life.

  Outside, I hear the crunch of tires on gravel. Headlights sweep the yard. Quickly, I put the papers back as I found them and hurry up the kitchen stairs. I crouch at the top and track their progress by sound: car doors opening and closing, the turn of a doorknob, the kitchen door banging shut, the jingle of car keys on the counter, footsteps across the wooden floor. A screech of metal as someone opens the door to the old-fashioned wood cookstove, a thunk as a chunk of firewood is thrown in. Water running into a pot followed by a clatter of metal-on-metal—one of them filling the teakettle and putting it on the stove to heat is my best guess. A shrill whistling a few minutes later confirms it. I imagine them sitting at our big farmhouse-style table: Charlotte with her elbows on the table and her hands wrapped around her cup as she blows on her tea to cool it, wearing one of the hand-knit sweaters she used to favor along with a pair of the earrings she makes from bits of recycled aluminum and old jewelry and tiny flat river stones. Diana drinking from the forest green ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES Smokey the Bear coffee mug my mother and I found at an antiques shop that I gave her for her seventeenth birthday, wearing a plaid flannel shirt, work boots, and jeans because she always favored practicality over style. They have no idea that I am here. No idea that I know.