Sister of Mine

by Laurie Petrou

  Elsewhere in the house, I heard Jameson scoff loudly, swear to himself, then the front door open and the walls reverberate with his leaving.

  The stairs creaked as Hattie’s small feet carried her up, and soon she’d turned the doorknob and come in. I sat up and tried to smile. I was so accustomed to putting on a face that wouldn’t belie my thoughts.

  “You’d think after all this time that you would know to knock on another person’s door,” I said, as she appeared in the doorway. The setting sun was shining in from the bathroom behind her, and at first she was in shadow, a small pixie specter. But then she shifted, and came in, and there she was, my little sister. She was also wearing a forced smile; she could never fool me. I readied myself.

  “Hi, Penny,” she said, sitting on the bed with a whimsical bounce. “What are you up to?”

  “Nothing. Jameson’s gone?”

  “He just left. Has some stuff to do.” Her smile was causing her some difficulty, I could see.

  “Everything okay?”

  She took a deep breath, rearranging her expression to one of a sister caught, gave me a knowing look, and I swear she almost batted her eyelashes. I’ll always remember how she looked, sitting there in my room as the sun fell away to evening and the taut cord of debt pulled between us. The sun now glowing almost through her, stray hairs bright and skin translucent, like some kind of saint.

  “Penny, listen. I need you to help me with something, and I want you to know I’ve put a lot of thought into it.”

  I sat up.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m listening.” What wouldn’t I do for my sister?

  “As you know,” she fiddled nervously, then looked at me, “I’ve been having trouble getting pregnant.” She waited for me to nod, to encourage her along. “Well, I can’t take it anymore. I know it’s because of me, that I’m the trouble.” She leaned in: “Jameson has gotten a girl pregnant before—back in high school.” She waved it off. “She had it taken care of—and so. It’s on me to fix. And, frankly, you.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  She cleared her throat and scooted forward towards me. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it and I felt, in her clammy small hand, a fierce desperation.

  “What I mean is,” she said, “I want you to carry our baby.”

  And so there it was, lying between us: that gasping fish of payback.

  I pulled away, remembering the door slamming after Jameson. Thinking of his finely composed face, and feeling my own face flush. I stammered, “What does that even mean? I know what that means, but what do you mean, Hattie?”

  “I know you and Jameson really care for each other, and,” she put up her hand at my interjection, “there are easy ways to do it. I’ve read about it. Sounds nuts, but you know, those turkey basters, they actually can work. And no gossipy doctor or nurse to get involved.” Her voice quickening now, as she saw me beginning to object.

  “No. Hattie, no.” I shook my head and pulled my legs up and away from her. “This is a bad idea. And weird.” And inside, something squirmed, something wriggled and tried to be set free.

  “Please. It’s not weird to me! I promise! I’ve told Jameson the same thing. He had the same reaction as you to begin with, but maybe if you both think on it—”

  “Where did you even come up with this idea?”

  “Penny, come on!” She looked angry now. “Everything I’ve done has been for you!” She lowered her voice. “Don’t you feel like you owe a little back to me?”

  And there it was. That was what she needed to say, and she knew it. There was the rub, there was the trick. You owe me. But I didn’t owe her. She was being manipulative, but I was well-versed in her tactics. I leveled my voice.

  “Hattie, I know. And you know I would, too, but I think you would regret this. I think we all would.”

  She shook her head fiercely, long red hair coming untied, some catching in her mouth. She looked furious for just a second, and a kind of madness flitted over her features.

  “No, I wouldn’t. You’re talking about you again, not me. I need this, Penny. This is what I want. What I deserve.”

  I sighed and tried to think of how to shake her. “I’ll—I’ll think about it, okay? I’m sure I’ll have no choice now but to,” I grumbled, “but my position is this now: I love you, but that is a crazy idea. You are not thinking straight. You’ve been a little … off-center lately, kiddo. You don’t want me to be your kid’s biological mother. It’s just too weird.”

  She smiled. “Okay, okay. I get how you feel,” she said, turning strangely back to her chipper self. “Just consider it. That’s all!” She shrugged, not bothered, casual. “Just think about it. Keep an open mind.” She leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek, and I smelled her soapy skin, her tea, and the hint of a burgeoning sense of justice.

  10

  I avoided Hattie the next morning, waiting for sounds that she had headed off to the shower before emerging to have my breakfast. I took my cereal out to the front porch and sat in a large, wooden porch swing my grandfather had made before his own early death and reflected on how we had long been the Grey Gardens of St. Margaret’s, and wondering how much more we could bear. The two weird sisters, growing into caricatures, dodging the ghosts of scandalous stories, insisting on living together in their dead mother’s home like women from a ghost story or a biblical parable.

  What would the good people of St. Margaret’s think if they knew what we had done, and that Hattie was asking me to carry the baby of her handsome lover in order to bear her a child? My face reddened as I waved half-heartedly at a neighbor pushing her plump baby in an umbrella stroller on the sidewalk past our house. An image of Jameson’s arm wrapped around my waist emerged suddenly in my mind, and I burned further with embarrassment, banishing the thought. I loved Hattie, I did. But my life had never been my own. Everything I have ever loved has been sucked into her vortex. Just when I felt I could stand apart, stretch, reach up and out and away, take the important steps away from her, from our home, I was back in a tangled embrace. It’s not enough to have my life. She wanted my body as well. And Jameson. I couldn’t stop my mind from creeping in his direction. Did he think of me, too?

  I castrated my curiosity and reminded myself of what Mrs. Neufeldt had said the day before. Mac, drunk and lonely like a dog whose owner has died, returning to the place of Buddy’s death. It made me nervous. There were too many pieces that needed to stay in place, like holding a paper chess set in the wind. I clenched my jaw—a habit I’d had as a child. Fucking Hattie. Two girls and a match, but a world of difference in what it looked like after that. A forest fire of debt.

  * * *

  Hattie was home, reading in the living room when I got back from work that day. She looked at me and dropped her eyes into her book, her foot twitching hyperactively. I went to the kitchen and filled the kettle, watching the activity in our birdfeeder out the window. A male blue jay dominated the thing, knocking it over in his greed, the bully of the yard, but it was hard not to be charmed by his beauty. Squirrels ran about on the ground, scratching at the fallen goods. The kettle whistled and I filled my mug, returning to the living room. Afternoon sun poured in the large windows and lit upon Hattie’s hair.

  “Hattie, listen. I’m sorry.” I sat across from her. “I thought about what you said all day, and I just can’t do it.”

  Hattie lifted her face to meet mine, a tight smile and neutral eyes.

  “You can’t.” Her face hardening.

  I pushed ahead.

  “You guys will have your own baby—you’re so young.”

  She was shaking her head now, in disbelief, chuckling.

  “ ‘Sorry, Hattie. I just can’t.’ Wow. You just can’t.”

  “I can’t do it, okay? I’m not comfortable with it.”

  “You’re ‘not comfortable’? Are you hearing yourself?” She was practically shouting now. “Because jeez, you know, gosh, Penny. I just can’t imagine what that f
eels like.”

  I closed my eyes and nodded. “Right. Of course. I see.” I met Hattie’s gaze, her face furious. “You’re just not thinking straight,” I said. She scoffed, but said nothing, opening her book again.

  I thought of Jameson. That he had rejected the idea gave me pause. I blushed in spite of myself for thinking that he might have considered it.

  I looped my finger into the afghan on the large chair I sat in, remembering that long-ago morning when we had united against reality to grieve in pretend shock: Buddy, gone. My tea steamed against the sun. Hattie’s foot jiggled and I knew that she was reading the same line over and over again.

  “I think I’ll stay at the barn tonight, okay? Looks like a nice night.”

  She said nothing. Waiting for me to leave.

  * * *

  I did stay at the barn that night, and the next number of nights, stopping at home only to shower and eat before work, trying to plan my visits for when Hattie was at work or before she woke. As the weather got colder, I held myself close, my unbidden thoughts sharpening. I stayed. I had an all-weather sleeping bag and felt well-protected, warm and safe. I kept a light on all night—a plug-in tungsten-style lamp that made use of the outlet the workmen had installed for me. I had encountered some teenagers on one of my first nights there and wanted to ward off any more. They had been bashful and apologetic, their stilted sex burning on their faces as they plodded off in search of a private place to smoke and sweat and explore.

  I brought a sketchbook with me, along with my journal and some pencils. I began to draw. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders as I rested the sketchbook on my knees and recorded with tentative scratchings the wildlife around me. Rabbits and birds, the odd deer at the fence, a hawk on a post. My drawings got better, with dark, cross-hatched shading, more confident, more thoughtful. The side of my hand became gray and smudged. I’d see it on my face in the mirror at home when I’d return to shower and change, the markings of a private life I was trying to draw out, moving from black-and-white to that gray area where I often landed. It made me feel whole, making these drawings, making something at all. Part of something fragile and innocent.

  It was getting too cold to stay at the barn much longer, but I was unsure about going home. Hattie had offered frosty silences when I saw her in passing. Jameson was also keeping his distance, I had noticed, and we hadn’t really seen each other since we’d both rebuffed Hattie’s request. I thought of him often. Hattie had stolen into my mind and left an idea to fester. And it wasn’t the payback or the baby that drew me, but Jameson. She must have known. She was waiting me out.

  How could no one see what she was really like? I guess people see what they want to see. It had been the same with Buddy.

  “Really? Are you sure, Penny? He’s always so nice.”

  “To you,” I had said, darkly. “Watch out for him, Hattie.” I rolled up a sleeve to show her a bruise shaped like four fingers around my arm. She gasped, begged me to get away from him. She believed me immediately, and more, looked frightened.

  But I didn’t leave him. I stayed with him, and our arguments became fights. Before long, they dissolved faster, quicker to get to the same end: me, huddled and scared. He was convinced that I made him cruel, that I brought something out in him.

  “Why do you do this to me?” he whined one night after he had knocked me off a kitchen chair onto the floor with one swipe, like an angry bear. I believed him. I believed it was my fault, too. I was vicious with him. I was angry and jealous and spiteful. I knew he was insecure and defensive and explosive. And he became a monster right before my eyes.

  The first time he hurt me, he was shocked at himself. After that, it became routine. I thought I might leave, I told myself I should. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t, because of Hattie. Always Hattie. I worried she’d be his target somehow.

  “Go ahead,” he spat at me, after a particularly brutal argument that ended with me in a corner, my head pounding from being knocked against the wall. “Leave. Leave me. Go ahead. I should have known. No loyalty. Not like your sister.” He cocked his head in feigned innocence, waiting for me to respond. “Think I haven’t noticed? She likes me just fine. Who do you think she’d choose, pretty little girl all alone? A kind, big man, or her fucked-up sister?” He swam in front of my eyes, and I shook my head to clear it, to shake off the mention of Hattie. He got close to my face, and I smelled the beer on his breath. “But go ahead. Leave, don’t leave. You decide.”

  I did decide.

  And I pulled her under to save her from being burned.

  * * *

  Now here we were. I threw myself into my work, focusing on the daycare’s day-to-day business: chatting with parents, doing administrative paperwork, doting on children in passing with abject loyalty, checking in with the caregivers. But I found my eyes wandering over to the schoolyard, hoping to see Jameson. When the day was over, I lingered getting into my car, before I holed up once again in the chilly barn, my sanctuary. I had hung my drawings with clothes pegs onto lines draping from corner to corner inside the barn, a kind of wholesome decoration in the face of my smoky nightmares and desires.

  11

  Mac Williams came to the property.

  I was reading by lamplight when I heard a truck rumbling up the old path, park with a screech. The headlights, which had shone through the slats in the barn walls, flicked off. I was hunched with a blanket around me, an open copy of Jane Eyre in my lap. The gothic moors had gotten to me, I told myself as footsteps crunched in the leaves. I tried to quiet my fear, tell myself that I was safe. Still, though, I reached for my keys and held one between my fingers as I’d been shown to do at a useless self-defense class Hattie and I had taken in high school. The footsteps stopped and a man’s voice called out, while rapping on the large door.

  “Dirty Penny! You in there?”

  Mac’s voice brought back his crude jokes, the kindred cruelty that aligned him with Buddy. Brothers in flannel, most valuable piss tanks, soldiers in tattooed arms. When they weren’t fishing and betting and drinking, they were brawling like street dogs. Two peas in a small-town pod. Mac was temperamental and unpredictable. Being near him was like doing a delicate waltz of trying to stay out of his way and not letting him know you were doing just that.

  “Yes. Yep, I’m here. That you, Mac?” I hadn’t put my key weapon down yet. Unsure what difference his answer made.

  “Sure is. Open up,” he said, sliding the door open before I could get to it.

  I stood and looked up at Mac, his presence an intimidating combination of huge stature and blatant drunkenness. I felt the smallness, the remoteness of the space, the familiarity of a large and dangerous man and nowhere to go but the corners of my frightened mind. I tried to stand tall.

  “What’re you doin’ here?” he asked me.

  “I might ask you the same thing.”

  “ ‘I might ask you the same thing,’ ” he mimicked, lumbering through the doorway. He looked unabashedly at everything in the barn, picking things up and putting them down in the wrong place, flicking my drawings with a fat finger. I smelled booze on him, even from where I was standing.

  “I’ve come by, ya know. Poked my head in a few times, but you were never here.”

  “It’s been getting too cold.”

  “What are you doing here anyway” he asked again. “It’s not like this is your house anymore, Mrs. Collerfield.”

  I ignored the question, watching him. He sat heavily in a beanbag chair I’d brought from the house, and just as he often did, he changed tack. He sighed, nodded his head a few times, working his way up to something.

  “God, I miss Bud. This place is not the same without him. This is his place, Penny. Always was.” He pointed a lazy finger at me. “Not yours. His. He saved up for it, worked on it, he loved this house. It’s not right that he’s not still here, you know.”

  I sat on a stool and tried to smile at him.

  “I’m sure you must miss him. You two were
good friends.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “That’s probably true,” I said quietly.

  Mac looked at me as though seeing me sitting there for the first time. He stared, and the silence built up between us, and then he looked around again, caught up in his thoughts.

  “I keep comin’ back here, ’cause I just don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense. In his own house …” He was mumbling, more to himself. “A man’s house should be, you know, sacred.” He looked up at the ceiling and around at the barn. “I remember when he bought this place. He thought it was so cool that there was a barn on the property. All the things he coulda done with this …” He trailed off.

  “Can I, uh, get you anything? I can put the kettle on.” He started, looked at me. I got up to plug it in. He followed me the short distance to where I kept my tea things. I smelled him coming behind me, felt myself tense, his hand suddenly on my shoulder.

  “How you holding up, Pen?” His hand moved to brush over my ear. “Got your hair done different, hey?”

  I dodged slightly and turned to face him. “It’s, uh, been difficult. But I’m managing.”

  He opened his arms wide and cocked his head. “Come here,” he said.

  Not knowing what else to do, and like women everywhere, I leaned stiffly into him, and he wrapped his huge arms around me.

  “There, there,” he murmured into my hair. I gave him a friendly pat to end the hug, but he still held me, now lifting my face up to his. “Poor girl.”

  I pulled away then. “I’m fine, Mac. Truly.”

  “Oh,” He scoffed, lifting his hands in surrender. “Okay. Just trying to be friendly, Penny. Share my grief, you know.” He shook his head.

  I felt for him in that moment. I think he believed it: that he was sad, and wanted to share in that sadness. But there was something dark, something angry in him that set me on edge in a familiar way. Mac was hot-tempered, a loose cannon. His grief could propel him in any direction. I thought suddenly of all the men, all the men all over who were like him and Buddy: taking what they wanted, mad when they didn’t get it. They grew around us like vicious weeds.